


The Unclaimed

by riot3672



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Criminal Wanda, Drama, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Gritty, Heavy Angst, Hydra (Marvel), Implied/Referenced Incest, Maximoff Twin Feels, POV Wanda Maximoff, Pietro Maximoff Feels, Pietro Maximoff Lives, Platonic Romance, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Pre-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Reality Bending, Revenge, Slow Burn, Super Powerful Wanda Maximoff, Survivor Guilt, Terrorism, Twincest, Zemo Development, Zemo's Family (mentioned) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-14
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-06-08 08:17:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 31,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6846697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riot3672/pseuds/riot3672
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Immediately following the Battle of Sokovia, Wanda escapes the Avengers in order to try to find the corpse she believes the Avengers left in Novi Grad. Devastated, angry, and terrified to see what this means for her powers, Wanda stumbles upon Zemo, entrenched in his own grief. The two of them team up, with intentions to avenge the loved ones they lost. </p><p>But, what Wanda doesn't realize is that Pietro is very much alive, teaming with a group of people he hates with the sole purpose of finding his sister. Now, he must find her before vengeance and grief drive her over the edge, into something much worse than Strucker ever could've dreamt.</p><p>(dark AU; Wanda/Zemo team up; contains CW spoilers)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The truth was, time didn’t stop when Pietro Maximoff died. It stopped the moment Wanda realized she wasn’t going to die with him.

The pain of losing his thoughts had been deafening, utterly destructive, wiping out every sense in one beat of a connection lost. She couldn’t even remember to look, to listen, to feel as the pain licked her every nerve, like the numbing affects of strong spice on the palate. Crushing Ultron’s metal heart, it had meant nothing. She felt out of her own body. She’d done it because it was what she was trained to do—destroy what destroyed her. But, the moment Ultron died, and Pietro was still dead, Wanda realized the only way she’d ever find peace.

And, for a moment, she’d even thought she’d get it. The train car had started to rise, and she’d felt her guts and the liquids in them rise, suddenly aware of her own humanity for a pinprick of a moment. Then, it had all faded away. She felt weightless, her senses dialed down, so all she was processing was the feeling of the rushing air on her fingertips, the blue of the sky, and the silence around her. She had known that it wouldn’t hurt. She’d close her eyes, her body would take the burden of the death without her, and she’d wake up with her brother and parents again. 

She’d accepted it, wanted it, needed it more than anything. There wasn’t a world below worth existing in. Maybe she and Pietro had overstayed their welcome when they didn’t die from the shell. They’d go out twelve minutes apart. She had felt okay in those twelve minutes, just as she must’ve been okay in those twelve minutes in the womb before she could join her twin in life. 

Then, time stopped. Then, she had another’s arms around her, carrying her in the bridal hold only Pietro or her parents had ever held her. She’d looked up, registered the purple-red, and forgot to do more in the panic. The stillness lurched to motion, and that thirteenth minute began. Wanda knew it had happened, but she swore she was drowning, that she couldn’t possibly follow that thirteenth minute into the fourteenth into forever. 

She only realized Vision had “saved” her through a sheen of nausea and panic as she crumpled to the floor of some kind of gigantic flying ship. She watched Vision fly away. There was no time to thank him or kill him for destroying the only reality she could stand living in. She swallowed down the bile inching up her throat and looked around. Her heart hammered in her chest, she broke out in cold sweat. There was no way this was real. This didn’t exist. She couldn’t exist in a world without Pietro. It must be a bad dream. Purgatory. If she waited long enough, if she kept telling herself it wasn't real, she’d wake up next to Pietro. Be it this life or the next, it didn’t matter to her. 

No familiar faces crossed her path. It seemed as though Vision was no more than a phantom, no trace of him. It seemed so possible that she’d never see another familiar face for the rest of her life. In a way, she never would. She’d never see a face and know the person as she’d known her brother. 

She hugged herself, aware of how she was wearing a stranger’s jacket. The ship was so big, and everyone was rushing around her, frantic speech in English and Sokovian, and no one so much as glanced at her. She had just lost her only family, and no one had any idea. She was broken into a million pieces and these people would be content to break her into a billion. Wanda didn’t know where the feeling came from, whether she’d experienced it or saw it on TV, but she felt like…a kid lost in a store. A little kid on the floor of a store, lost in the crumbling realization that she was never going to see her mother father brother ever again. She felt the warm electricity of her hexes around her fingertips, but the only explosion she could manage was to crumple facedown on the floor of the craft sobbing. 

“Wanda?”

Wanda didn’t even get to lift herself off the ground; Steve did it for her. He scraped her off the floor and pulled her all the way to her feet. Despite every repulsed instinct inside her, her knees buckled and she fell right into him. He was built as solid as a goddamn tree, to the point where Wanda wasn’t sure he was even human. 

Worse still, she couldn’t say a word. She couldn’t even find the words in Sokovian, let alone English. All she could do was bury her face into his uniform, teeth chattering, eyes burning, waiting for her head to stop spinning and to just goddamn wake up.

“What happened?” Wanda finally managed to choke out.

She pulled away from Steve and only wiped her eyes enough to be able to see. 

Steve looked her right in the eye. It might have made her respect Steve more if she could think a single thought outside of Pietro.

“He was shot. Clint ran out to grab a civilian child, and Ultron started shooting. Pietro shielded them.”

Wanda didn’t know what she’d expected to hear. Something about how he fell off Sokovia, or something like that. An inevitable death he couldn't have run from. Not that. Not that he’d been shot. Not that he’d been shot protecting someone else. Not that…

That wasn’t how Pietro Maximoff would die. Wanda knew him. He was the most selfish asshole she knew. He cared about her and himself. No one else. When they were homeless, he hadn’t even let Wanda take in stray cats or dogs because he cared so much about the two of them.He would never risk his life for someone else. He certainly wouldn’t risk his life for Clint Barton. Pietro had even told her before the fight began that he hated Clint Barton. Like, to the point where Wanda thought he would stop the fight to push Clint off Sokovia. She jokingly said she’d have to watch out for Clint. How had he…he wouldn’t. This wasn’t…

“He’s—” Wanda said. “That’s why—?”

Steve put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Wanda. I promise we’ll make it up to you.”

Pietro was dead.

Pietro was dead, and it was

( _her_ )

the Avengers’ fault. Clint had said he was going to send Pietro back to get her. What the hell had happened to that? This was real, and it was all because of the goddamn _Avengers_. She and Pietro had done their all, and these guys had told them everything would be okay. Every other Avenger was back in one piece, they were all going home, yet she’d lost everything. 

“How do you plan to do that?” Wanda asked, her voice laced in venom. 

Steve didn’t speak for a moment. “We’ll take you in. We’ll…”

They were going to do nothing.

“Where is he?” 

“Clint had him last.”

And what would _Clint Barton_ do with the body?

Wanda felt sick again.

She couldn’t feel him anymore, so there was no way to ever know where he was. How could she trust that Clint would bring his body on board? There were thousands of corpses still on that fallen rock. Pietro’s was probably down there. 

“Okay,” Wanda said.

She needed to get away from Steve. 

Wanda glanced over the edge of the craft. If she didn’t survive the fall, she’d be with Pietro. If she did, she’d find her brother’s body. If she had to live more than twelve minutes without Pietro, there was no way she was going to spend them with his killers.

She didn’t remember how long she waited, or the walk over. Didn’t really remember looking over the edge and seeing the clouds and the ocean of rubble beneath her. Didn’t think for one moment it wasn’t worth it.

She tipped her body over the edge and started falling.

She definitely didn’t remember hitting the ground.

#

Wanda woke up a small crater in the dust-covered grass, a headache the only noticeable pain. She shut her eyes and wiggled her fingers and toes, just to make sure she wasn’t missing any injuries. Everything worked. Her hands still felt warm from what must’ve been the hexes. After all, she was alive, and there was no other way she could’ve survived a fall like that. 

She sat up, and was immediately greeted by an ache and the suddenly uncertainty that all her organs were still inside her body. She wasn’t sure what to call it—disassociation, nausea, lightheadedness—but it got her back lying on the ground. _Brilliant plan, Wanda._ No problem. She’d just wait a bit then get going. Pietro had strapped a supply pack to her leg. She couldn’t quite tell if everything had been destroyed upon impact. What’d he left in there? All she could imagine wanting at that moment was water, but she supposed the granola bars would be useful in time. The fact that he’d shoved the photo of them and their parents in there was almost better than the thought of nourishment. 

Wanda groped under her dress for the supplies. There were two utterly flattened granola bars and the photo, but the water bottle was gone. It’d been a tiny plastic one. Would those explode upon impact? She took a deep breath and slowly sat up again, pushing herself up with her arms. She scanned the area, and sure enough, the water bottle was lying by some rubble several yards away, its brightly colored American label stark against the dust and dull colored rubble. A hex materialized from her fingertips and she watched as the red mist wrapped around the bottle and slid it to her. 

So, out of all the nightmare Wanda wanted to forget, still having her confusing powers was still there. She should be grateful, she supposed. She wasn’t. With Pietro, there had been empathy and support. Now, there was a grand total of one individual enhanced by Strucker’s experiments, and nothing seemed more damning. 

She cracked open the bottle and took a sip. Finally, she took her time to look around. She was in some town outside of Novi Grad, spread out houses, no walking people, but still not spared from the catastrophe that was Novi Grad in this distance. There was no denying the strewn body or two within view.

_Ignore them. There’s only one body you need to find, and he’d be somewhere in Novi Grad._

She took a swig of water, capped the bottle, put it back in her pack, and mentally prepared to get up. God be damned, she was going to find her brother, she was going to bury him, and depending on how that went, she’d either kill herself or go solo and try to figure out these powers on her own. 

That was when she finally noticed someone else was alive in this place. A man, not university aged, but not quite old enough for her to call him middle aged. He had medium brown hair cut short, the kind of stubble Pietro got when he neglected shaving a couple days, pale skin, and as he sat knees practically hugged to his chest on a chunk of broken building, he seemed…small. She looked at him for a few seconds before he turned his head and they made eye contact. The skin around his eyes was puffy, his eyes bloodshot. She didn’t even need to read his mind to know.

Yet, she did want to reach into his mind. He didn’t simply pass her over to return to his mourning. His features animated a bit. A crease grew between his brows, the corner of his lip twitched as if he was debating saying something. He didn’t seem startled, though. Had he known she was here longer than she’d known about him?

“Are you okay, _gospođica_?” he asked.

What kind of man took time out of his mourning to ask some stranger if she was okay? Hearing such a kind voice speaking Sokovian was almost more than Wanda could handle. Her throat started to clog. 

“ _Da_ ,” Wanda replied.

_No. No, no no,_ he called her “miss,” _God, I’m not._

No one had called her miss or ma’am practically since she was a kid. It was enough to get her teary. Every second of today was enough to get her teary.

The man offered her a single crooked finger, so subtle she might have otherwise missed it. She didn’t bother wiping her eyes as she approached him. Up close, he might have not been as small as she imagined. Not absurdly tall, but not noticeably short. His nice clothing hung off him like he had muscles. His eyes were big and light brown and surrounded by the burst capillaries of grief. 

“Are you looking for someone?” he asked in Sokovian.

An hour ago, Wanda would’ve never divulged this kind of information to strangers. Part of her was still telling herself to stay quiet. But there was something so visceral about this moment, the two of them having glimpsed the other’s grief. The fact that she must look like an evil witch from the storybooks, tears still running down her cheeks, yet he reached forward, not stepped back. 

“My brother,” Wanda said. “My twin. He…” She glanced over at Novi Grad. “He was in the city when…”

The man looked back toward Novi Grad. “You’re far from him.”

Wanda nodded. “I should start walking.”

Or…could she fly? Was that how she hadn’t died falling from the helicarrier? God, what she’d give to have at least absorbed Pietro’s powers. 

Wanda looked into the man’s eyes, and she didn’t even try—she saw it all. The man telling his wife and son that they’d be safe outside the city. He saw the man’s elderly father, he saw his small child, barely old enough for school, pointing excitedly out the car window as Iron Man flew by. She saw the building he dropped his family at, and how it now lay in absolute shambles. She looked back at the man, new tears welling in his eyes that he rapidly tried to blink away.

She swallowed the lump in her throat, but it was no use. Tears streamed down her face, and she had no idea who she was crying for anymore: this man, who had lost everyone, or herself. 

The man wiped his eyes. “I have to find my family, but once I do, I could take you to the city.” _Or what’s left_. 

Wanda should’ve left. Should’ve bid the man goodbye and let him be. She didn’t need protection. No one in Sokovia could compare to the army of Ultrons. Being with him or not wouldn’t make it harder or easier for the Avengers to try to pick her up. (In fact, she was still a bit apprehensive that they had not showed up yet.)

Yet, looking at this man, something kept her right where she was. His thoughts showed he had no ill intentions with her, and that was saying a lot for people who walked around after disasters. And there was something…

“Okay,” Wanda said. 

There was a long pause. Long enough for Wanda to try to wipe the tears and smeared eyeliner off her face. For a moment, she hoped she never found a mirror again. She took a deep breath and looked back up at the man. His eyes were still red, but he seemed a bit more composed.

“I’m Helmut, but most people call me by my last name, Zemo.”

People called him by his last name? Military? “Wanda.”

They didn’t shake hands. “Hopefully, it won’t take long, but it’s a lot of rubble.”

“I can help.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Thank you.”

They got to work. She needed to clear her head before finding Pietro anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

The conversation came up after a few hours lifting debris and tossing it aside.

“Maximoff, right?” he said. “Wanda Maximoff.”

Wanda glanced up at Zemo and continued on lifting a couple bricks. “Didn’t know I was famous.”

“Everyone knows about Strucker’s super soldiers.”

Wanda’s chest tightened. No, everyone did not know about Strucker’s experiments. Only certain people knew. “Everyone?”

Zemo shrugged. “Fair point.” He glanced up. “I saw you fall from the sky. Red mists cushioned the impact. I could only assume.”

It probably would’ve been a good enough explanation for most, but she’d inherited Pietro’s paranoid streak. “Still, my hexes don’t make me one of Strucker’s. No one knew he was here.”

Zemo straightened back out and stretched. The soft pops of his joints were louder against the silence. “We’ve been working for hours. I imagine you want to use your powers. No need to hide anything.”

Wanda _was_ a little relieved. She picked up a broken window pane with her hexes and dropped it a good dozen meters away; she and Zemo had been avoiding the piece for a while to avoid getting cut. 

“Telekinesis is quite the feat, isn’t it,” he mused. “The thought that you could lift more with your mind than you could with your body.”

In all honesty, Strucker, Pietro, and she didn’t understand her powers at all. So, “quite” wasn’t _quite_ the word she’d use. More like “confusing as all hell and terrifying.” 

“How did you know about Strucker? You his therapist?”

Zemo seemed to smile for a flash of a second. She imagined it was what she looked like when she tried to smile to anyone besides Pietro and cute children and animals. “I work for the Sokovian Armed Forces.” A soldier. Wow, would they really…? “I’m the commander for EKO Scorpion.”

EKO Scorpion, the elite Sokovian intelligence group? She’d only heard stories about the mind-blowing things the group did for Sokovia. “Are you allowed to tell me this?”

He smiled this time. A wry smile, but longer than the last one. “Are you allowed to tell me you’re the result of illegal human experimentation?”

Touche. 

At least it explained knowing about Strucker. 

“I thought we were going to join something like EKO Scorpion. Some legitimate form of the Sokovian military or some related group like what America had with S.H.I.E.L.D.”

He returned his focus to pushing away debris. “In another life, perhaps…”

#

It took them another day and a half to remove enough debris for Zemo to find what he wanted. Or…who he was looking for. It was an odd emotion to play with, that burning need to find someone only to have the barrage of pain upon finding them. It made her wonder what on earth she was doing going mad trying to find Pietro’s body. She knew what she’d do once she found him. She could see her future reflected in Helmut Zemo’s eyes. 

They found his family surrounded by the crumbs of what must’ve been a bedroom of some kind, a couple toys including an Iron Man doll around them. A dresser lay on top of them. Zemo’s father had his arms curled around Zemo’s wife and son. The son curled deep between his mother and grandfather, face buried in his mother’s chest. Wanda had been trying for months to not absorb people’s emotions around her, calling it some kind of intrusion of people’s private lives, but Zemo’s despair was a wall that smacked right into her. 

She sunk to her knees along with Zemo, and watched through tears as he crawled over to them and took them all in his arms, like a child scrambling to keep a hand on all his dolls. It sounded weird, but she didn’t think she’d ever seen a grown man cry before. Papa never cried, and he was on his way to teaching Pietro the same. But, out on the streets, horrible things happened to them, and Pietro wasn’t very good at composing himself when she’d start crying. Sure, he'd managed to hold it back in when they were adults, but she could never really wash away the memories of him sobbing into her shoulder as kids.

But, she had to admit, Zemo was still composed, even as he rocked his family back and forth and let tears stain their dust-covered clothing. It unnerved her a bit. She couldn’t tell if he knew, but she could see right through whatever facade he was putting on. In his head, he was sobbing, pushing his family so close he’d break his bones to lose another inch between them, screaming, begging for them back. She wanted to tell him that it was okay to express all that. That it wouldn’t make the pain go away, but that in the end, he’d feel that one less knife sticking out of his back. 

She tried not to focus on him. She had no right to be in this private moment, and she’d already seen too much. She could see so much beyond it, too. She saw the building in its full glory four days ago, she saw it being built by sweat-glistened men in the 1960s, she saw the petticoats and corsets that passed in and out of thick wooden doors, the timber stacked, a lone wolf as it trotted over the land and howled for a lost pack…

“Wanda?”

She shook her head, and the image quickly faded back to Zemo and his family. 

“Yes?” Wanda replied.

He gently pulled his son into his arms. “Do you still want to go to the city?”

This man was holding his dead son in his arms and still wanted to help her. “If you don’t mind…”

“Come on. There’s no one around here for a funeral. I figured the best I can do is cremate them. They can,” he paused, “wait a few more days.”

Wanda wondered if Zemo’s family’s corpses would look like Pietro’s when they laid them out side by side. It wasn't comforting, but it didn’t make anything feel worse.

Zemo walked over to her and handed her the little boy’s corpse. He was so light, a little boy named Finn, so confused when he died, thoughts all on Daddy, where Daddy was, if Daddy was helping the Iron Man… She could see beyond that, though. Toddling around the house, his favorite toy as a baby, even hazy, visceral memories, seeing him cry for the first time as he met a nervous, overjoyed version of the man and the corpse in the man’s arms behind her. 

_Stop it._ She didn’t know who exactly she was asking to stop—were her powers suddenly a person?—but she begged. She hadn’t slipped into a…trance in months, not since Strucker had her focused so hard on perfecting her external powers. Especially not now, she couldn’t risk falling too deep into the realm without time. Pietro thought it was so cool the few times she’d told him, but it wasn’t enough to trust it. She’d never even told Strucker about that. In fact, she’d only briefly mentioned it to Thor on the ride over to Sokovia, and she’d only told him because he was a god. He’d said it made sense, whatever _that_ meant.

Zemo had a car to match his clothing, nice but not so nice that she internally cringed at it being covered in dirt. He had laid the corpses in the trunk, and Wanda strained as they bumped along for any sounds of them hitting the sides of the trunk. 

“Thank you,” Zemo suddenly said. “Most people wouldn’t have stayed as long as you did.”

Wanda shifted. “It’s not like I have anywhere else to go. You needed the help.”

“Still, I appreciate it.”

“Don’t feel like you have to stick around. You giving me the ride is more than enough.”

He glanced at her. “I suppose your safety isn’t a concern. Still, I’d hate to leave you in this wasteland.”

Wanda crossed her arms. “I’ll be okay. I don’t want to burden you.” 

The conversation died for another half hour or so. “Do you ever wonder why we’re doing this?” Wanda said.

“Hm?”

“This…” why was she so chatty with this guy, “this, pretending that maybe there’s a chance that…?”

_That Pietro is still alive. That I can revive him if I could get my hands on him._

Zemo exhaled. “Is there really any other way to be?”

#

Wanda told herself that she’d know when to give up. Check the places the Avengers had talked about being. Check where she’d felt him. Check…Check…

( _check everywhere_ )

Check as if there was anything to check at all. As if Novi Grad wasn’t miles of rubble. As if she wasn’t trying to find a single grain of sand in a sandbox. As if there was a single chance in high hell that she _hadn’t_ felt Pietro’s soul drift out of his body and felt the reverberations of his corpse hitting the dirt. 

Time seemed to fade away as she ran from place to place, shoving pieces of building and broken earth away by the ton with her hexes. She didn’t know what she expected, but even whatever soft landing the Avengers had given Novi Grad didn’t leave it as anything remotely resembling a city. She’d never seen a nuclear blast before, but she imagined the aftermath looked something like this. Not only was everything leveled, but the ground itself stuck out, collapsed, to the point where it was hard to just walk anywhere. But, on Wanda trudged, Zemo keeping relative distance. He told her he was just keeping an eye on the car as they moved it where they could, but his thoughts betrayed a hint of uncertainty about her. Not outright fear, but an apprehension at not knowing her well enough to know both what she was capable of and how much control she had. She didn’t blame him.

_Where is he?_

She had seen it briefly, the spot he’d died. She couldn’t verbalize the difference between it and any other spot in Novi Grad. Zemo didn’t ask for an explanation, so she just led the way. So Steve said he’d been shot. How many times? Wanda didn’t know what’d be more comforting: knowing only one lucky bullet got him, or knowing that it had taken a hail of them to stop him. It still sounded so stupid in her head. A speedster killed by bullets. Bullshit. 

What would she do once she found him? Would she cremate him like Zemo wanted to do to his family? If magic existed in the world, what did that say for the stuff from the stories, the ability to resurrect people? Would she regret it one day, that she burned his body? But, at the same time, what good would letting his corpse rot next to her do? He deserved better than that. If he was dead, she couldn’t just bring him back. If she planned to drag his corpse around with her, she might as well change her name to Wanda Bates. Because that’s what a goddamn horror movie villain would do. She’d cremate him. Looking at his corpse’s face wouldn’t be the same as looking at his face.

She knew she was close to where he died. There was a pull around it, like any thought of being happy again was sucked away. She was also ready to faint, but that might still have something to do with her physical condition.

“What does he look like?” Zemo asked.

There were other corpses around them. Men, women, children. Of course Zemo wouldn’t know.

“Early twenties. Dark stubble, white hair with dark roots coming through. Wearing a blue exercise shirt, black pants, and grey running shoes.”

_Where is he?_

She felt him so clearly, the pain was so raw here, yet he wasn’t here. 

What if he wasn’t here?

Because 

He wasn’t here.

He wasn’t here. He may be buried somewhere deep in the earth, deeper than she could ever reach. Maybe he was crushed to dust when Novi Grad hit the ground again. Maybe he—

_Maybe they have him._

Her stomach turned at the thought. Heat spread from her core out to her fingertips. Somewhere in the back of her hand, a small voice said _stop_ , but she could hardly hear it. 

And what would they do with it? What did they think, that either of them wanted him to be buried in the country they hated? Dressed by the hands who’d murdered their parents? Who did they think they were, like they had any right to—any right to—

“ _WHERE ARE YOU_?” she cried. 

She didn’t fall to the ground like last time. She stayed upright, lashed out, jerking arm movements spraying the hex energy around everything around her. She heard the crackle of the flesh and plaster as the energy singed it off. She saw Zemo duck behind a chunk of wall. The rage clawed at her throat, suffocating her. She wanted to rip her heart out, stamp every moment of the past month into oblivion, but all she could do, all she could fucking do anymore was release more hex energy. It swirled around her like a maelstrom. The edges of everything grew fuzzy. She just wanted to stop. She just wanted to—to

_This isn’t me. Please, God, just let me leave. I take it all back. I just want to be normal Wanda Maximoff again. I want to be spat on and search every night in the cold for shelter. Anything for him. I can’t even_

She wanted to scream, but she couldn’t make a sound. The hexes intensified. She didn’t know how to stop. Even if part of her needed to. She just—She just…

Her eyes were wide open, but it took a while for her to realize Zemo was in front of her. He seemed calm, like the hexes were just a figment of her imagination. He took her hand, his grip remaining even as her hand lay like a dead fish in his. The hexes around them began to fade.

He didn’t speak, didn’t even really make eye contact with her. He just pulled her into him, until they were embracing. The hexes hissed away, leaving them in a deafening silence. She couldn’t look around her. She tightened her grip on Zemo’s expensive, tattered jacket, pressed into his warmth pretending harder than anything that she was in her brother’s embrace. She sunk to the floor, taking Zemo down with her, and started to sob. Body convulsing, painful, overpowering sobs. Even grounded, her stomach churned, she couldn’t orient up from down, and her brother was dead. Her brother was dead, she didn’t have his body, and she had no way of ever getting it. She wept, sputtered, and wheezed until she saw stars. 

“Breathe, Wanda,” Zemo whispered.

He knocked her on the back once. Not hard, but enough to startle her into gulping down air. She breathed in deep, and waited. With the tiniest semblance of awareness of her own body, she started slowly, carefully inhaling and exhaling. By the time she was breathing again, her head hurt and she couldn’t imagine getting up for anything.

At some point, hopefully not long after, she lost consciousness.

#

“You didn’t have to do that,” Wanda said hours later, as she and Zemo sat around the pyre they’d built out of shards of fence to honor his family. It smelled awful, but she wasn’t about to acknowledge it. She and Pietro had done something similar when their parents had died. They never got the bodies, but they’d burned an old piece of meat and whatever shiny junk they could find in a funeral for them. 

Zemo kept his gaze on the flames. “I did, though.”

“I could’ve killed you. I know what I did to those corpses around us.”

“I’ve gone into worse.”

“You were afraid of me.”

He finally looked to her and quirked his eyebrow. “Afraid isn’t the word I’d use. What could I possibly fear about you? It’s hard to fear anything when you don’t fear death.”

“You could’ve walked away. I’m not some cute little travel companion for you and your family’s ashes. I’m not here to lead you to bettering your life after tragedy.”

“You think I want someone to help me move past this?” He motioned to the pyre. “Move past them? I never want to forget them, the people or the pain losing them caused me. I helped you because I saw the same thing in you.”

“And what’s that?”

“You hate the Avengers.” How did he…? “No one works for Hydra because they love America or the Avengers.”

It was getting easier and easier to imagine hating them. Was she really going to value twenty-four hours of kindness and some advice over what she lost? She looked to Zemo. He’d given her thirty-six hours of kindness, but what did that mean if they separated once it got light again?

“They recruited Pietro and I to fight Ultron. It was my fault he was even powered. I never—I…I always thought they all went home…”

_What if I helped your family die?_

“They do. The ones who’ve been training, who should be willing to lay down their lives in service. You and your brother were just kids. What were you planning on doing after this mission?”

Wanda rubbed her arm. “They probably would’ve offered us jobs, but I…I would’ve left. I always wanted a quiet life. We could’ve gone away from people.”

Zemo shifted. “It seems unfair, doesn’t it? That they get to come away from hundreds of missions, and they’re tasked with keeping two kids alive, and they can’t even do that?” Clint said he’d have Pietro come get her… “They don’t care, the western saviors. They say they’re here to protect us, but they don’t care what damage they cause, which of us is lost in the battle. We would’ve died anyway. Street rats and peasants to them.”

“What would you do to them?” Wanda asked.

She watched the fire simmer out of Zemo’s eyes, until they were back to the sad brown eyes she’d begun to recognize. He tossed a bit of debris into the fire. 

“I don’t know.” He exhaled and looked up to her. “I do know that we’re both alone. I know I wouldn’t know what to do with myself thinking you were out here alone.”

Wanda crossed her arms. “I’m fine. I have,” she conjured a hex.

“Still.” They made eye contact. “I’ll be leaving in the morning. You’re welcome to come along.”

Zemo reached out to her when no one else did, and no one else would. He knew her pain. He harbored her hatred. He knew where she came from. He had a wider skill set than she could ever dream of having. She wouldn’t have to be alone.

“Okay.”

They watched the fire crackle in silence.


	3. Chapter 3

The first step of “thinking more about it” was returning to Strucker’s gothic castle. Zemo said it was to “collect more supplies,” but he seemed to forget that Wanda could read minds. He really just wanted Wanda to try to find clothing that wasn’t a small black dress and someone else’s tight leather jacket. Wanda understood.

Wanda didn’t know what she expected, but she was a little surprised to see Zemo step back a little to let Wanda lead them through the gutted remains of Strucker’s facility. 

After NATO, Ultron, and the Battle of Sokovia, the place was hardly recognizable. Gone was the leather furniture and hardwood of her days as a volunteer, leaving broken glass panes that Wanda had once tried to break her head against during her first few days enhanced and blown out shells of walls in hallways she and Pietro used to sneak down. She thought she’d feel so vindicated seeing the place a wreck, knowing that Strucker had died with it, but it just made her feel…nothing. It didn’t dull the pain of losing Pietro. It didn’t make the horrors and beautiful moments she’d experienced in this place any better or worse. She couldn’t reminisce with Zemo. If she wanted to confide, she didn’t even know where to start. Would she start with being recruited by Dr. List, or would she start with the first time she and Pietro kissed? 

She walked up hollow steps to the living quarters they'd given her and Pietro once they’d been deemed stable. It used to remind her of a hotel room from the movies, but one look inside, and it wasn’t the dramas it reminded her of anymore. More like a disaster film.

Everything was covered in a fine layer of dust and dirt, furniture knocked over, the mattress partially knocked off the bed, the headboard cracked in half. All the nicknacks, pictures, stuffed animals, and strewn clothing that had once made this space livable were gone. God, she really hoped NATO hadn’t taken the stuff she and Pietro had been forced to leave behind to travel effectively. 

She stepped into the closet she and Pietro had shared and surveyed the damage. It appeared as though random articles of clothing were stolen—her favorite jackets, gone—leaving other random articles. A couple of Pietro’s jackets. Her eyes filled with tears as she saw his old favorite, the track jacket with the white arrows going down the arms. He’d left in here to wear his other leather jacket. She shed Natasha’s jacket Pietro had “borrowed” and tossed it to the ground to put on Pietro’s. It fell huge but snug, and it still smelled like him. God.

She could feel the relief at having found at least one of Pietro’s things, and worked on herself. She found a pair of skinny jeans, some extra socks, one bra, two pairs of panties, a couple shirts…fuck, where were all her clothes? A particular fuck added to where the fuck was all her underwear? Did NATO _really_ have to take that? 

Grumbling to herself about how perverted NATO was, she changed into fresh underwear, the jeans, a v-neck, and Pietro’s jacket. She was apparently out shorts or other skirts, thanks NATO, so she’d have to keep the dress she’d been wearing before. She went back and forth on keeping the jacket. On one hand, Natasha had given her such a terrifying “I’m going to skin, murder, and eat you” look during the battle that Wanda was half convinced Natasha would eventually push her off the flying Novi Grad, but Pietro had also picked out that jacket. In the end, she let it go, and she left with a couple nightgowns. 

Now, for any other junk lying around. She knew miracles didn’t exist and she wouldn’t find all those stupid vibrators Pietro had bought for her when Strucker had given them free reign over a chunk of finances, but she wouldn’t mind finding a mirror or a watch or something. 

What she found, of course, was even better. She found her goddamn iPod Pietro hadn’t let her bring with her when they fled. It still had all the music, stupid apps, and…photos and videos they’d taken over the six or so months they’d been free with Strucker. She went right to the photos. They’d snapped everything: stupid faces at one another, awkwardly angled candids of them sitting on the bed or brushing their teeth, scenic pictures throwing up Sokovian gang symbols, and…more than a few pictures of them in either nothing but underwear or nothing at all, some cheeky ones with them covering their bits with hats or scarves and some flaunting it all. More than a few of them kissing. 

She wondered what this damning evidence would do after the fact. Would the death and the incest just make sense to people, or would they see it the way Wanda saw it, that she lost so much more than her brother? Practically, she also didn’t know if she should tell Zemo about the extra parts to her and Pietro’s relationship. 

She stuck it with her pack and kept going. Otherwise, the only useful stuff was a box of Oreos and a half-full jar of Nutella from Pietro’s food stash. (For _some_ reason, everything else that he’d stored away was gone.)

“Did you find what you needed?” Zemo asked as she emerged from the bedroom.

Wanda nodded. “Enough. They took some…unnecessary things, but I found a lot.”

He looked her up and down. “That your brother’s jacket?” She nodded. 

“Do you know where we’re going after this?” Wanda asked as they made their way out of Strucker’s facility. 

“Serbia is our best bet, at least to get back into a functioning country.”

Wanda and Zemo looked out the cracked window that one overlooked Novi Grad. “How far does the damage go?”

“The city dropped a few miles west of where it stood before. We’re headed east.” He broke his gaze to look to her. “Have you been outside of Novi Grad?”

“Not since I was a child.”

“Once you escape the city, there’s not much out there anyway. The roads are always in bad condition, so it won’t be a quick trip, but we’ll be out of this disaster zone soon enough.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke. But, she could sense it. It had hurt him to say disaster zone as much as it had hurt her. Disaster zone. Home. An entire city obliterated. It wasn’t just a house fire where she lost a favorite toy; the city she’d spent her entire life was gone. No one would ever build it back up. Close to every memory she’d ever had was buried somewhere in the miles of ruin. She’d have nothing but those memories until time eroded them into nothing. She’d likely never return to this spot, where she was born, where she lost everything, where she fell in love, where she gained inhuman powers, where she lost everything a second time. First steps, first words, first day of school, first kiss, first fuck, first hex, first death. No one but her would ever know. If it wasn’t for the fact that the Avengers and some Hydra agents had met Pietro, his entire existence would’ve lived in her memories. For the most part, all his memories in freedom lay in her head. 

She resisted looking to Zemo’s thoughts. She imagined they were similar, but wanted to maintain their distance. 

“Ready?” he asked.

“Yeah. There’s nothing else here.”

They’d already checked, and Strucker’s lab was completely inaccessible. Collapse. Even if there were dirty secrets in that secret incinerator room she and Pietro had found, there was no way to get down there. They’d work with what they could find going forward. Getting out of Novi Grad was a good start regardless. 

#

The car still smelled vaguely of corpse, but Wanda hated to say she was getting pretty used to it. What she was still getting used to, incidentally, was just the car ride on the rough Sokovian roads. She’d always had a fairly iron stomach, but the thought of getting sick in front of Zemo was nerve wracking. It seemed to be a fast track to a self fulfilling prophecy. She couldn’t tell if it’d be rude to listen to whatever music Pietro threw onto his iPod, or if it’d cause her to burst into tears the moment one of Pietro’s guilty pleasure Euro-pop songs came on. There was no radio signal, and Wanda wasn’t about to offer to put Pietro’s iPod into the jack. 

The silence itself was unnerving. Not that Wanda could never escape this alliance, but what if they couldn’t communicate beyond the few words they’d exchanged about their losses? Even if she didn’t know Zemo nor know if she should trust him, he was a welcome relief from the crippling loneliness running from the Avengers had been. Nothing sounded worse than either trying to survive on her own without having even buried Pietro’s body or crawling and begging her way back to the Avengers. 

“Hey, do you—?” Wanda started to say.

Only to be interrupted by an unholy combination of her stomach growling and being irrationally horrified by it. 

“Do you…?” Zemo replied.

“Do you…” Shit, she’d actually forgotten what filler question she was going to ask, “want to talk…” Jesus, about what? Not their feelings. Not Sokovia. 

“Are you uncomfortable with silence?” He asked her genuinely. Pietro would’ve been sarcastic about it.

“No. I…didn’t know if you were.”

“I’m not.” He flashed amusement in his eyes. She was probably delirious from not eating for three days, but she swore his eyes looked lighter when he was happier. “Also, don’t kill yourself. If you’re hungry, eat.” _The dead won’t be any less dead_. When his thoughts came through, he seemed to always be thinking in poetry. Or she was delirious. 

She still had those flattened granola bars, but considering Pietro had been eating one on the quinjet, took one bite, and it completely eroded into his lap, she’d stick to the cookies she’d taken from Strucker’s. 

She pulled out the package with the English she didn’t understand but the brand and picture she did, peeled open the packaging, and took out a cookie. Not that Oreos ever expired, but it’d be nice to know how fresh they’d be. She took a bite, and it was way too sweet, but it snapped instead of crumbled. Congratulations Pietro for having gotten a new package before the Avengers attacked the facility. Now, for the goddamn Nutella. She distinctly remembered him storing that away three weeks before. Nutella lasted for-fucking-ever; sugars kept the bacteria from growing. So, even opened, it likely wasn’t bad. She sniffed it. Smelled fine. It didn’t have much protein, but she could do with some fat and calories. 

Likely Zemo wouldn’t admit his own pitiful humanity and she wouldn’t have to share, but she slid a new Oreo through to test it regardless. Sure enough, the sugar overload had her gagging for a moment, but everything was fine. She waited a moment before going in for a second one. She and Pietro had perfected breaking forced fasts, and she knew she couldn’t have more than a few before she’d just end up sick. 

“You want one?” she asked before preparing her second cookie.

“No thank you.”

Wanda quirked a brow. “You know, I hear drivers functioning at full capacity is more important than passengers in the same state.”

Zemo snorted. “I’m the commander of a Sokovian death squad. Trust me, if there’s one thing they teach you on day one, it’s how to function with zero basic needs fulfilled.”

Still. Wanda pulled a cookie out by two fingers and held it halfway between them. He definitely thought about rolling his eyes, but he remained straight-faced as he took the cookie. She’d admit it; there was definitely some satisfaction in seeing him actually eat it. Pietro used to try to shove his food to her when they were starving on the streets. Old habits die hard. 

#

Wanda made an effort to not fall asleep on the drive, especially not through the treacherous roads they were riding down, but she might’ve tuned out a fair number of times. She glanced at the car clock, and two hours had passed.

“Wanda?”

Wanda perked up. Maybe it would be a safety precaution to put some music on. 

“Yeah?”

“Your powers.” She looked to Zemo. The dark circles under his eyes were more pronounced than she remembered. Maybe it was all starting to hit him. Hit them both. “What are they?”

“Electro-neurological interfacing. Telekinesis. Mental manipulation.”

“What does that look like?”

She conjured a tiny hex. “I can move objects with my mind, and this stuff…it can push things back, catch things, burn through things. I can…make people do things, show them their fears. I never had time to really play with it, but I could send feelings to people. Read minds.” She paused. “I never told Strucker about this but…I…don’t know what you’d call it. I can sort of…see into other dimensions, other times. It’s easier to do when I touch things, but I can see a place’s past and what I…think is its future. Pietro was convinced that I could see the dead.”

Zemo furrowed his brow. “All that from an alien stone?”

“Yeah.”

“And your brother’s power was…super speed?”

“Yeah.” Wanda played with her hex. “Trust me, we don't understand why my power was so much more vast than his. We have theories, but nothing we could prove.” Her hex flared up a bit. “Now that Strucker’s dead, especially.” She clenched her fist, and the hex dissipated. Wanda paused. “What can you do?”

“Typical military skills. Tactician. I can build things. Sneak into places. Fool people. Hand to hand. Torture. Kill. Multilingual.” 

He was definitely under-exaggerating, but she supposed she could always watch what he could do. 

“Multilingual? What languages?”

“Sokovian, English, German, and Russian.”

“Speak, read and write?”

“Yes. You?”

“I speak Sokovian and English, but I can’t read and write in English.”

“You want to learn?”

“Sometimes.”

“How old are you, by the way?” 

“Twenty-one. You?”

“Thirty-six.”

He’d had his child, by many accounts, at the perfect age. Probably had a perfect family. All of it lost. He seemed like the kind of guy who hadn’t experienced many tragedies. It made her feel oddly older. He certainly didn’t look worn enough for thirty-six. She would’ve guessed thirty.

The drive continued by in a blur. Zemo clearly had money, but Wanda kept forgetting and got surprised every time he pulled it out. Once they reached their first Serbian town, they dragged themselves into a clean looking inn, bleary eyes barely taking in the color of the walls, walked up one flight of stairs, opened a door with an old fashioned key, and examined their accommodations. Two twin beds. Compared to what she and Pietro would get from life on the streets, it was a luxury. 

She went into the bathroom for a moment to wash the makeup off her face. Surprisingly, it was mostly off. The black streaks down her cheeks had faded. Still, she wet a towel and ran the rough fabric over her skin. Once she was decent enough to pass her smudged makeup as bags under her eyes, she returned to the bedroom. Zemo was already asleep, lying on top of the covers. 

She barely pulled the covers off, tossed her shoes aside, and climbed in.

She wondered if she’d wake up in the same reality come morning. 


	4. Chapter 4

The world was quiet when Wanda woke up, like someone had set the volume of life down to one. It was so subtle, the sounds coming through as she laid awake in a wash of morning light, eyes on the cracked ceiling. The old ceiling fan above her head whined as it turned, cars passed by, and somewhere in the world, Zemo was breathing a few feet from her. Not an even breathing, so he was awake, but in a state she knew well. Somewhere between alive and pushing alive away, just waiting for that jolt remembering that everyone he loved was dead.

Or, maybe that was just her. Not likely. Someone like Zemo wasn’t idle unless he couldn’t manage otherwise. It him before her, though. She managed a few more seconds of numbness before it all came crashing down. 

Her brother was dead. It was still true.

God, what was she supposed to do? She didn’t know why, but she’d expected Zemo to pull her along. Yet, there he was, frozen in the grief she was trying so hard to rise above. But for what? She didn’t feel as enraged and devastated as much as just empty. If Zemo wasn’t getting out of bed, she couldn’t imagine being the one to do it. She didn’t know where she was getting the strength to breathe, let alone sit up, walk, function.

She rolled over so she was facing him. He took a deep breath, and she watched the covers rise and fall over him. Something told her that she should say something to him, but no words came into her head. After a few minutes, she gave up. Maybe it wasn’t the right day. As long as Zemo didn’t want to do anything, she doubted she’d be much different. 

She shut her eyes. A peek into Zemo’s head showed an image of her sleeping face; he hadn’t noticed her few minutes of being awake. It was a relief to fall asleep again. In her dreams, she was either in blackness and could pretend she’d died along with her brother, or he’d linger in her dreams, his touch, his face, his voice so real she could pretend. 

The next time she woke up, it was dark out. She seriously considered staying in bed some more, but she was sore, her mouth tasted awful, and in the presence of another human being, she hadn’t quite lost enough self respect to piss herself. Wanda got out of bed and dragged her way into the bathroom. Her brain must’ve still been warming up, because she swore she stared at the bidet for fifteen seconds before it occurred to her that most European hotels had them. Her mother had told her once when she was a kid. She couldn’t remember how it had come up, but conversations with children were always a little odd. 

She moved to the mirror and tried for a good few seconds to not look at herself. She knew what she’d see. 

“You look like shit.”

Wanda looked up and smiled. Pietro crouched around the rim of the bidet. If she was feeling mean, she’d push him in. He grinned back at her in the dusty mirror. Just the way she’d left him, muscular, healthy, happy. Still with the damn white hair though. 

“I can take a shower. Your premature whiting is permanent,” she replied.

“It’s in style now.”

“Sure. You still look stupid, though.”

“Bite me.”

She didn’t dare turn around. She knocked his image in the glass, biting back a bigger smile. The glass was cold, the kind of cold that traveled down her skin. Pietro was suddenly gone. The room, which had been almost warm, was freezing. Heater broken in the winter, frost seeping through the cracks. She watched images dance in the mirror, flying bullets, blood on the walls and cracks in the mirror. They were yelling in Russian. Wanda turned on the hot tap.

The burst of heat broke the image, and she was back in the bathroom, alone. She pooled the water, washed out her mouth, and examined the bathroom. Not a single thing had happened. Including her brother. God, including her brother. She wiped her eyes, waited, splashed some water over her face, and headed back out.

Zemo was gone. He’d left a note on her bed. _Went to get supplies. Be back soon._

It was the most they’d spoken since getting to Serbia.

#

Months slid by from under her. She and Zemo had an odd magnetic quality to their functioning. Neither of them really talked to one another besides acknowledgements or questions about basic human functioning. _Did you eat today? I’m gonna go get something at the market. Do you need anything? I’ll be back in half an hour. Does the TV work? Do you mind?_ But, like most conversation, Wanda had learned since gaining her powers, the true conversation was happening in the pauses and gestures. 

Truthfully, they were looking out for each other. They watched each other mourn when it was too hard to focus on their own mourning. Zemo would feel her out before deciding whether to get a new hotel room as they traveled around Serbia or just live out of his car. When she’d venture outside to try to clear her head, she tried to be back to the base before Zemo could worry. Occasionally, she’d end up half-catatonic in an alley and Zemo would drag her back. 

He’d stopped being as useless as her right around the three month mark. He’d been getting out and around more in the past few weeks, and he’d started spending his time in front of the computer or a television reading articles about the Avengers and watching news reels. He never seemed upset when he did it, though. Almost as though he’d found himself a new hobby. He seemed okay. Always a shell of the man he’d once been, but okay.

As Zemo returned to functioning in one place, Wanda couldn’t sit still. At first, it had seemed so normal. She’d had vivid dreams whenever she slept, which was fairly often in her state. They’d been benign, mostly about Pietro. Sometimes the recurring nightmares from her childhood, but nothing she couldn’t shake off. 

The problems came when they came while she was awake. Despite all the sleep, she could never feel fully refreshed. One too long contemplation to her dead twin and she’d need to leave lest she try banging her head against a bathtub. She’d give some easy excuse, going to buy food or get some fresh air, and Zemo would give her a nod or “uh-huh” and she’d be gone.

The concrete told stories. Rebellions, wars, purges, births, protests, whatever history it could spit out with her mind in frays. She’d see Pietro every once in a while. For the longest time, she’d been tricked by it and ended up sobbing in the street when she realized it was all a hallucination. 

Wanda didn’t know the time, date, or exact city they were in. Only that Zemo was scrolling through some new article, half-informing her that Hulk was still missing and Hawkeye had retired. She didn’t know how she’d found it, or why she even cared, but she found some TV show she and Pietro had been following for years. It was one of those shows that killed off everyone, and he’d even filmed her reacting to the big deaths he’d seen coming after reading the books. The two of them had missed half the most recent season, and they’d been playing a marathon that night. She’d tried to stay as little engaged as possible, if for no other reason because death, even fictional, hit her like punches to the gut. 

Zemo glanced up at the screen just as a girl bled to death. 

“Are you enjoying this?” Zemo asked.

“No,” she answered.

She didn’t know the real answer.

The show went on, with the typical finale shenanigans. She wished she knew if it was good or not. She’d had so many opinions before Pietro’s death, back when there was room to fret over the little things. 

_Ghost_. Pietro had told her about that at some point. No matter the context, for what. It stuck with her then, though, as if hearing the word would somehow make something better.

She watched as the character not-twinless-Wanda had adored as he walked into at least ten knives. Each of the bastards sticking one in, one by one. She glanced at Zemo, whose eyes were back on the screen. He seemed confused, a natural reaction, sure, but she couldn’t imagine it mirrored in herself. His gaze fell on her once the screen went blank.

“Wanda?” he said.

They hadn’t said ghost. Pietro wouldn’t stop talking about that. He would’ve been talking about it right then. 

_You know why I cared so badly?_

She squeezed her eyes shut. She wasn’t like that. She didn’t hear voices. She—

There were tears running down her face. 

“He wasn’t supposed to die like that,” she said. She tossed the remote to his bed. “You can change it.”

Zemo switched it to the news.

He wasn’t supposed to die like that. Pietro would’ve been pissed. She was pissed. God, she was so pissed, but no amount of nearing breaking her hands punching walls was going to change that. This was—fuck, how was she supposed to wake up tomorrow if every reality and non-reality had the wrong death?

“Gonna smoke,” Wanda said. “Think we need a new pack.”

Zemo had bought one pack in the early days, and each of them would grab one every now and again. They still hadn’t finished their one pack. He didn’t protest, though.

The moment the night air whipped against her face, Pietro was back. He’d been going through some odd evolutions, odd looks, but now he was back to how she always remembered him. A little too skinny, brown hair, just growing his facial hair. 

“Sucked, didn’t it?” he said.

“Fuck off,” she muttered.

She walked into a shop with its neon sign still buzzing, bought a pack of cigarettes, and leaned against the store’s brick wall to light up. God, she didn’t even _like_ smoking. What a nutcase she’d become.

“Died the wrong way,” Pietro continued, leaning against the wall next to her. She could feel his warmth.

“Go away. I know you’re not real.”

She blew the smoke out toward him, and the puff went right through him.

“What’re you even doing with yourself?” he asked. The smoke billowed around him. “You’re never going to be able to convince yourself.”

“Ultron did it,” Wanda said.

“Tony Stark created Ultron. You—”

“He made his own choices.”

“You fucked up Tony Stark’s mind. I was just going to kill him.”

“He chose—Ultron chose—”

Pietro grabbed her wrist and lifted her arm above her head, like he was going to kiss her. “We could’ve ended it any time before Ultron went homicidal. Face it, _Scarlet Witch_ : it’s your fault. You needed to show yourself just how _powerful_ you’d become. It couldn’t just be justice. you needed to laugh in his face.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “You’re not real.”

“Kill yourself and you’ll have all the closure you need.”

“ _You’re not real_!”

She swung around and clobbered him against the wall. 

Her fist went right through him and smashed against the unforgiving brick behind him. She heard the pops and cracks. Then, the pain. It exploded, reverberated off each knuckle, down her arm, down until she was on her knees hunched over, stomach roiling, holding back tears that had no purpose not falling. She didn’t even get the relief of normalcy. Her brain didn’t spit out a rapid fire succession of _fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck_ like a regular person. All she thought was that she made a shitty witch. 

She was insane. She was absolutely insane, and her brother was dead. Her only family was dead, and he would’ve she should blame herself. She couldn’t survive out here without him. How much more obvious need it be that he was a crutch to her? Hell, that she couldn’t walk an inch without him? She needed him. She needed him so badly, and he was gone. She needed his voice to speak, his feet hitting the concrete to know how to walk, his face to know how they’d felt out that day. He was her heart, her brain, her soul. 

Pietro was the one who broke bones. He threw punches. But, he healed. He wouldn’t be crying over his hand the way she was. He would’ve—

Her hand seethed in pain, her guts were gripped in panic, but all she could feel, truly feel, was the crushing absence of her twin. She dropped to the floor, face to the concrete, sobbing. She’d tucked her bad hand under her, her body was pressing on it, but she couldn’t fathom getting up again. _It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. It’s—It’s_

Her body heaved, but nothing came out. God, there was just nothing, wasn’t there? No family, no comfort, no contentment, not even a measly dribble of bile to prove that she was still a poorly maintained human, not _enhanced_ , not _Scarlet Witch_ , just Wanda. 

Her hand was really starting to hurt. The panic slowly rose above the grief. She needed to get back to Zemo. Even if he’d been like crying in front of a wall the past while. She missed the time when sometimes she’d catch him with tears in his eyes. 

Wanda walked back to the hotel without incident and found Zemo still in front of the television. The news droned on in the background. He looked somewhere between half asleep and bored. But, the moment she entered the room, he animated.

“Wanda, Jesus, what happened to your hand?” Zemo said.

Wanda blushed. “I punched a wall.”

He beckoned her over to his bed. “You sure have an odd way of smoking.”

Shame welled in her chest, but she couldn’t even bring herself to wipe the tears away. She must look pathetic.

But, Zemo didn’t seem to notice. He examined her hand, his touch gentle. 

“I can’t make a perfect splint, so you’ll have to meet me halfway.” 

He pulled some medical tape, cotton, and…a gift card. He fumbled with the material for a moment, and grit his teeth through half the process. It was the most emotion he’d shown in ten or so weeks. But, by the end, she had her hand in a splint. It still ached, but it didn’t feel like anything was horribly out of place.

“Try punching a pillow next time, okay?” Zemo said as he turned the news back up.

“Thank you,” she said.

He handed her a tissue. “You’re welcome.”

She wiped off her face and laid down to watch the news. 

It was about Tony Stark. He was apparently trying to start a grant program for young techies. How could she look at herself, look at this man, and not know whose fault it was? She didn’t ask Stark to build Ultron. She hadn’t given Ultron his mind. She hadn’t given him his homicidal tendencies or his fickle loyalty. That was all in the man being applauded for his charity work. 

It wasn’t her fault. It was his fault.

“How noble,” Wanda muttered.

Zemo glanced over at her, then back at the television. “It’s disgusting, isn’t it? The way they can just walk away from it all and get lauded for their every move. Fund the future. That’s all anyone talks about, isn’t it? As if the past ceases to exist the moment it passes, as if people’s livelihoods don’t depend on it.”

Wanda crossed her arms. “Tony Stark makes his livelihood giving people tragic pasts. Can you imagine, a weapons manufacturer, the kinds of death he’s caused?” She exhaled. “We spent over six hours on a plane together, and he never once even acknowledged what he did to Pietro and my parents. Give us a lifetime, and he’ll never bring up Pietro.”

“No one ever will. It’s us against them. They report on who was saved. They could’ve died after what happened, but they didn’t. They feel safe to sit on their pedestals and pity those who were sacrificed against their wills for their pathetic lives. None of them deserve it. My son would’ve been four in a week. But what does it matter to them as long as _their_ son made it to four?” Zemo sat up straighter. “And they don’t even pretend to acknowledge it. The supposed ambassadors of problem solving, and they can’t even placate the ones who suffered. Won’t even pretend they made a negative contribution to their perfect little world saving of the year.”

God, she hated that man. More than Pietro had ever let on. Pietro hadn’t known pure hatred, the kind that fills the void of pure emptiness. The kind of hatred that replaced happiness and sadness like a placebo, a perfect little imitator. 

“I’d make them feel our pain,” Zemo said. He settled his gaze on her. The red and yellow from the TV reflected off his eyes. “I’d make them understand their mistake.”

They’d started the conversation months ago, but she knew exactly what he was talking about. What he’d do the Avengers.

“And you can do that?” she asked.

“With your help, I could do it ten times over.”

She was done bathing in madness.

“You thought about this long?”

“Long enough.” He paused. “Do you want to think about it more?”

She didn’t know how, or why, but she did.

She really did.


	5. Chapter 5

Wanda was oddly aware of where she was when she woke up, but the actual time baffled her for quite a while. She opened her eyes, still waking up, and took in as much as her fuzzy brain could manage. Same plain hotel room they’d stepped into some night in the past, but it looked a bit more broken in. A jacket was strewn across a chair, a coffee mug sat on the nightstand, and Zemo had planted himself at the tiny desk, scribbling onto a pad of paper provided by the hotel. 

She scooted back until the wall provided enough support for her to sit up. 

“How long have we been out?” she asked.

“Six hours or so. You’ve been out a bit longer.”

Wanda stretched. “You could’ve woken me.”

“You were dead asleep. It seemed cruel if all we’d be doing was thinking anyway.”

She pushed the covers off. “Any interesting thoughts?”

“Tell me when you’re ready.”

Wanda nodded and slipped into the bathroom before she could feel bad about delaying whatever he wanted to do with her another fifteen minutes.

The edges of the shower may have had touches of mold, but it had decent water pressure and hot water. She savored it for all it was worth. With as little of the tiny shampoo, conditioner, and body wash as she could, she scrubbed off the dirt, sweat, and blood. A lack of razor wasn’t ideal, but she could cover her prickles of hair with clothing pretty easily. Well, assuming they stayed relatively north; it was summer, wasn’t it? 

She’d think about it later. As far as it mattered then, she was clean and looked and smelled like it. She finger-combed out her hair as best she could, and examined herself in the mirror. Nothing really looked different; she looked a tiny bit more filled out than when on the streets, but still slighter than her best with Strucker. It didn't look as bad as she thought it would. So this was what a twin without her twin looked like. Aside from looking worn out and unhappy, she didn’t look obviously incomplete. If only people knew.

Wanda stepped back into her clothing, threw her hair up, and went outside to meet Zemo.

“What’ve you come up with?” Wanda asked as she sat on the edge of the bed closest to the desk.

He slid a tiny water bottle over toward her. “Tell me, Wanda, what makes the Avengers tick: a common goal or the desperation to maintain their team?”

“You mean are they an actual team or just codependent?” 

“Yes.”

She thought about them. Tony Stark, so desperate to show the world how charming and successful and personable he was, when all he wanted was to shut away, plagued by demons he’d never admit to his closest lover, let alone himself. Steve Rogers, so good, so pure, so horribly lost and depressed, so desperate to return to a time he learns time and time again could never be as perfect as nostalgia painted. Banner, Widow, even Hawkeye, and rejected, alone, clinging onto relations with people that would be so obviously transient in retrospect. Of course they were all together because they had no other way to battle the loneliness. 

“They’re all about their relationships,” Wanda answered. “Nothing terrifies them more than losing each other.” She looked over to Zemo. He watched her, leaned in, listening to her every word. Strucker hadn’t even listened to her like that. “It’s particularly true for Tony Stark.”

Zemo tapped his pen against his pad of paper. “So, it’d hurt pretty badly if he lost faith in fellow teammates?”

“No doubt.” She paused. “Ultron wanted me to tear them apart. I have the ability to manipulate fear, show it, essentially cause glimpses of nightmares. I got everyone except Clint Barton. Stark showed me all his teammates dead, blaming him. Rogers a ball in the 1940s, a woman, the end of the war. Thor felt guilt over losses in his life. Romanoff saw flashes from her time in the Black Widow program and the school they had. Learning to kill, the discipline, the sterilization. Banner the destruction, the casualties.”

He stopped tapping his pen. “A lot to think about.” He ripped off the several pages he had written on the pad. “If you don’t mind, Miss Maximoff, I’d like to go somewhere with a good internet connection.”

They took their few belongings and checked out as quietly as they’d come. The Serbian roads were little better than the Sokovian ones, but at least there were road signs in reasonable spots and enough of occasional drivers to relieve the eeriness. 

“His name was Pietro, by the way,” Wanda said. “I don’t think I ever said that.”

“Where were your parents from?”

Had she told him she that they’d died? Maybe she screamed orphan still. 

“Sokovia. One side was Romani and German, the other Ashkenazi Jews. Why?”

“It’s interesting they name one twin a German name and the other Italian.”

Wanda shrugged. “I think they just liked the sound. My mother used to say we were named after Peter Pan and Wendy Darling, but I never got her to admit it a second time when I learned that Wendy saw Peter in a more romantic light.”

Zemo took a second too long to answer, and Wanda almost convinced herself that Zemo had just figured out her dirty little secret about Pietro. 

“Sounds like your parents put a lot of effort into naming you two. It’s sweet.”

“What’s your son’s name?” She couldn’t even remember from her vision. 

“Finn. His given name was Sigfried, named after my wife’s father, but she had a falling out with him a few months after our son was born. She started calling him Finn, the name she’d picked off one of those baby naming sites that stuck, out of spite. It ended up fitting him.” He adjusted his hand on the steering wheel. “My wife’s name was Anastasia, my father’s Johann.”

“Full German?”

“On my side. My wife’s a bit more of a mix. Some Swedish in there. My boy had light hair, so we think she must’ve had one of those Nordic countries in her genes somewhere.” He paused. “You said Romani and German?”

Wanda nodded. “Take a wild guess.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s ancient history. I never even met my grandmother. My father went to Sokovia on his own.”

“You think she’s still alive?”

“Knowing my track record, doubtful. Our parents had us kind of late, so my mother’s parents died when we were kids.” She snorted. “Whole family’s having a reunion up there. Didn’t invite me.”

Her own line weighed heavier than she’d planned, the thought of it—Mama, Papa, Pietro, all their grandparents she couldn’t remember in eternal bliss, yet all she could do was watch worlds away. She bit back the tears.

She expected him to say something, some sort of “they wanted you down here” kind of cheesy line. She got a soft squeeze of her hand, an immediate comfort with the warmth of his skin against hers. His finger pads were rough, although sign that his military career checked out. It seemed odd that she hadn’t expected the touch in a million years, not after what he’d done during her breakdown. It was almost validating that that had happened not because Zemo was just trying to solve a problem, but because he cared about her, at least a little. Maybe she still hadn’t fully recovered her brain, but it didn’t seem impossible. 

They didn’t speak again for a while. She supposed she was comfortable with silence. Pietro had never been a quiet person, but she supposed she had always been. It was kind of relaxing not having to say anything. 

#

The next hotel they stayed out actually deserved the title hotel, just within the borders of Croatia. Zemo hadn't been worried for a bit crossing borders. She’d seen him hand out a few wads of bills, but it seemed like he had raw ability with just talking and flashing his own passport to get them places. She wondered at what country they’d have to start actually showing a passport for her.

This hotel was nicer than anything she’d stayed at before, something she could tell by the television and the lounging chair in their bedroom alone. Everything was spotless. Zemo had lingered outside the room, leaving Wanda a few seconds alone to inspect everything. Two queen beds, a minibar with a perfect little sign advertising the charges for removal of anything, and binders filled with Latin-lettered Croatian. Flipping through the channels one by one it was. She wondered if Zemo could teach her the Latin alphabet.

Zemo walked in without a word, scanned the room, nodded, then moved to the desk. Wanda tried to resist her curiosity, but she figured she should be kept in the loop.

“Nice hallway?” she said.

“Just casing it.” He ran his hand over the wall immediately in front of him. “I need a personal computer.”

“Don’t you have one?”

“Not one I want to be decrypting S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra files with.”

Wanda glanced at the wall. “And you’re going to take whoever’s in there’s computer?”

“They came in talking about leaving for dinner and an opera. They’d be gone for at least five hours, which is more than enough for what I need. Opportunity calls.”

“Can you pick locks in hotel rooms?”

“Not these. Actually, they make it even easier. Right as they leave, I’ll have you go down to the front desk and asking for a new key. Whatever means.”

In other words, give whoever at the desk a little hex. 

“You used English, right?”

“Yeah. Don’t worry too much about it. No one who works at these places will care enough that you’re using a certain language.”

Within the hour, the couple left, and Wanda headed downstairs. Even knowing exactly how to do what she had to do, there were still nerves brewing. Hell, even having Zemo providing support from a chair and behind a phone in the lobby didn’t help as much as she would’ve hoped.

_I lost my room key. Room 423. Thank you._

She took a deep breath and approached the front desk. A young woman was working. Not that she could flirt with a male, but female wasn’t encouraging.

“What can I do for you?” the woman asked in English, accented but precisely annunciated.

“I lost my room key. Could I have another?” Wanda asked.

The woman nodded. “Of course. What room?”

“Four twenty-three.”

“Last name?”

Last name?

She resisted looking pleadingly to Zemo. No, this was her first job. She’d get it done.

But, Jesus, was there a hand motion or—

_Give me the room key. No questions_ she thought as she conjured a hex, trying to keep it as subtle as possible. The woman’s eyes flashed red, and she handed Wanda a room key.

“Thank you,” Wanda said.

“Any time, ma’am.”

She walked back to the elevators as slowly as she could, Zemo joining her as they stepped into the elevator. 

“Perfect work,” Zemo said.

Wanda slipped up a smile. “Really?”

“Yeah, of course.” Zemo flashed a sort of smirk. “The Jedi flare was unexpected, but you did the job.”

“Jedi flare?”

“You did a Jedi mind trick…”

She did _what_?

“Uh…I…that won’t happen again.”

Zemo shook his head and she handed him the key. “Like I said, perfect work.”

While Zemo nicked whoever’s laptop, Wanda returned to the room.

_Jedi mind trick_? Ugh, not only was she losing it, but losing it in the most idiotic way possible. She couldn’t even remember what hand motion she’d made. But, it was kind of interesting. Usually the hexes had a certain weight to them, and she’d have to strain to move them as she pleased and guide them. The Jedi mind trick motion wouldn’t have gotten her hexes anywhere. Was it becoming more mental, more automated? Pietro would’ve been so into it. 

Also, could it help in close contact fighting? If anyone bothered to memorize the motions she made for certain hexes, she could throw them off. 

Zemo walked in and planted himself on the bed, sitting on the edge as if he was far too busy to make it another few steps to the desk. She took a seat next to him, leaving a decent gap, but close enough to see. He’d immediately minimized a couple windows left by the owner, and had Google up. A simple search of “leaked S.H.I.E.L.D. files”…actually had results.

“That’s it?” Wanda asked.

“Getting the files isn’t hard. But, the ones we really want are still buried under layers of encryption. In case anyone comes looking, it’ll link back to this fellow’s IP address. He’ll check out as innocent; no harm done.”

She watched him hack for hours, enthralled more than she’d ever been watching Pietro play video games. It wasn’t even that interesting, but there was something so engrossing about how he didn’t hesitate for a second, didn’t trip up, just kept shifting, closing, and opening windows until something worked. It’d be the slightest things, a quirk of an eyebrow or a hand run through his hair to indicate any level of reaction. 

Eventually, she settled for lying on the upper part of the bed while Zemo worked. It didn’t take more than two hours or so, though.

“Wanda, c’mere,” Zemo said.

Wanda sat up and crawled over to the edge of the bed and threw her legs over again.

“Over sixty years of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra files,” he said.

He clicked on something, and a grainy video of…Captain America, against a decades-old backdrop, popped onto the screen. She leaned in as far as she could. Their legs touched, she could feel the heat. 

“All that…”

“Black Widow released everything a year ago during the Hydra Uprising. Both sides had to accept their losses and neither took it too much to heart, but you’d be amazed at how much these organizations kept track of.”

“Am I in here?”

“No. Strucker created new files after all this was leaked.” 

He pulled out a flash drive and slid it in. Transferred all the files. Deleted the remaining files off the computer.

Zemo set his own laptop on the bed and left the flash drive next to it. He assumedly returned the laptop to their neighbors, and returned seemingly less tense than before.

“Strucker’s files…” Wanda said. “Do you have those?”

Apparently, Strucker’s files were all in a password protected folder. Jesus, for a hacker, he sure didn’t try to keep everything hidden. He pulled up her digital file with ease. There were a couple photos, and pages and pages of German. 

“Can I ask how you have Strucker’s files?” she asked.

“Do you really think any intelligence agency worth half their salt would have a literal castle of a supposed private research facility in their country and not keep tabs?” He shifted. “We were even considering kidnapping you and your brother at one point before the Avengers showed up. You know what he was actually training you two to do, don’t you?”

“Hydra, right? Something along the lines of world domination.”

Zemo transferred the leaked Hydra and S.H.I.E.L.D. files into a folder on his computer. 

“The hacking…is it just standard to learn?”

“I took it up on the side. It’s really not that hard.”

For a moment, all Wanda could do was study him. Zemo was, by all accounts, rather ordinary looking. Average height, brown hair, brown eyes, fair skin. Good looking from certain angles, with certain expressions. Thin lips, yet piercing eyes. Any signs of physical superiority, the muscle, the well-worn hands, were hidden under quiet expensive (by her standards) clothing. He spoke softly, evenly. 

Yet, slowly, slowly, she was seeing that this man might be a one-man death squad. She wondered if he thought the same thing looking at her. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew guys sorry for the long update gap! I'm gonna work on an outline this week, so it should be updating faster now.

Wanda and Zemo sat reading Hydra and S.H.I.E.L.D. files for days. Or, well, Zemo read files and Wanda watched videos. She was still unsure if she should bring up the not being able to read thing. Even if they seemingly spent so much time idling around, it seemed like an insult somehow to suggest that maybe they spend some of that time doing something as banal as reading lessons. Plus, it wasn’t like everything she’d learned was useless. She had a good few pages of notes, and combined with what she gave Zemo from her memories and journeys into the Avengers’ heads was a fair amount. 

Zemo hadn’t talked that much the last few days. She knew why, but she still hadn’t decided the best way to help him with his grief. It almost felt like the worst way in which she was mooching off him. Getting free food and lodging was one thing, but getting free emotional support for losing Pietro when she couldn’t offer the same to him felt criminal. She’d woken to the sound of a siren a few nights back and seen him listening to a voice recording left by his wife and all she did was roll onto her other side and go back to sleep. 

It was beginning to feel like an endless cycle of anxiousness and restlessness. Zemo was so focused, but on what? Why couldn’t they just go and destroy the Avengers? The problem with these “super villains” or whatever Ultron had done was that it was too complicated. They always wanted too many casualties. But killing the Avengers, how goddamn difficult could it be, for her? She was enhanced, and they hardly were. 

Looking at a video of the Hulk, publicly M.I.A., Wanda wondered how easy it truly would be to get rid of the Avengers. If she had Pietro, she bet it would’ve been easy. So easy it would’ve been laughable. All he would’ve had to do was grab a kitchen knife and run right through them all. 

She wondered how fast she could go with her telekinesis. If she messed with their minds first, she supposed it’d be just as easy. It would be all about if she had the balls to do it. 

“Anything?” Zemo asked.

Wanda blinked, focusing back on the Hulk video. Why was she even watching that if Hulk was location unknown? “The problem with Tony Stark is of course he has a billion skeletons and issues, but so far none of his problems have been enough to break Steve Rogers. He’s the one you need to hit hard.”

Zemo motioned the laptop over to him. She watched as he pulled up Steve’s file. “He doesn’t have many living connections, does he?”

“None like you mentioned. Nothing familial.”

Zemo scrolled through. “All his war buddies are either in retirement homes or dead.”

Wanda quirked a brow. “Peggy Carter wouldn’t be good for much? Lover’s closer to family than friend.”

“Go ahead and take the old lady hostage. She either still has some fight and kicks your ass or you held a ninety-four year old woman hostage.”

“What about Bucky Barnes?” He was the only name within the Howling Commandos that wasn’t either left alone or with a deceased symbol. 

Wanda scrolled down to a photo of Barnes. She’d seen him in Steve’s head sometime when she’d met Steve. Rogers remembered him with a little more sparkle in his eye than even pre-WWII photos gave off. 

“Does he seem familiar to you?” Wanda asked.

Lately, everyone gave her the same nagging feeling of deja vu that only the most personally important celebrities used to give her. To say it was annoying was an understatement. 

Zemo leaned over her to look, and pulled up the file of…the Winter Soldier. 

“Have you heard of the Winter Soldier?” Zemo asked her.

“In stories. Even with the Hydra branch I worked with, no one had ever worked with him. Some didn’t believe he existed.” She studied the image. “Why hasn’t it been publicized that Captain America used to be friends with the Winter Soldier? Kind of a funny Romeo and Juliet bromance with the whole thing.”

“Hydra apparently doesn’t list their super soldier’s best friends. It may be just what we need, though.” Zemo scrolled through and clicked on a video. He smiled. “Exactly what we need.”

Wanda looked over. The video was…of Rogers and Barnes, Barnes pulling Rogers out of the river in Washington D.C. in 2014. So, they still knew each other. Still had some companionship. Judging by Cap’s…not obsession, not romantic love, but some kind of deep care for this man, it was the perfect target. 

“How does that destroy the Avengers, though? Half the team is made up of criminals,” Wanda said.

Zemo looked to her and cocked his head a bit. “You think someone could be an assassin for Hydra for fifty years and not have destroyed some lives? Let’s see what we can dig up.”

“Are his mission reports on there?”

Zemo shook his head. “No. Just the names and locations of every living officer who ever worked with him.”

Wanda jumped to her feet a little too quickly. “Any around here?”

#

Zemo explained the value of specific questions as they drove over to a Hydra agent’s residence in Hungary. He lived in an apartment complex, they had to get him into their car to take him somewhere a bit less conspicuous, and Zemo was adamant that she stay as low profile as possible. 

“You really think the Avengers would still be looking for me?” Wanda asked as she stuffed her hair into a baseball cap she and Zemo had picked up along the way. 

“Those guys don’t seem to die easily. Can’t be too safe.”

She supposed that was true. “But…how careful should I be?”

“Do what you have to do to cover us. Besides, visible hexes don’t mean much if no one can remember what happened.”

It wasn’t that what Zemo was asking was too much. She’d done similar exercises with Strucker before. It was just…she’d never done a maneuver like this without Pietro. Sure, she’d been terrified of Ultron deep down, and had feared disappointing him, but Pietro had been there performing alongside her. Someone else could take the fall. Here, she’d pledged to be reliable for Zemo, and Zemo was counting on her. His disappointment was worse than any anger she would’ve gotten from Strucker for failing a given task. 

She wasn’t going to disappoint him. She wasn’t going to be a leech. 

The man, Matthew Sommer, was a lower level Hydra worker who’d been tossed among several huge names within the organization, barely forty. Wanda hadn’t confirmed with a dig into Zemo’s mind, but she imagined this man was as much a test run as a source of information on the Winter Soldier. He lived on the fifth floor, apartment six. Functioning ventilation system. It seemed so odd that no one had thought to use her for the purpose before. 

Zemo gave Wanda easy instructions for climbing the fire escapes to the roof and a pat on the shoulder. It was assurance enough. Plus, she’d been climbing buildings since she was a kid. She’d been trying to compile some kind of list of things she could do besides her powers, and this was one of the few. This, making fires out of garbage, crying on command, and pickpocketing. Somehow, she couldn't imagine using any of those skills. 

The ventilation was standard, a vent blowing out warm air. She threw Zemo an index finger in the air before sliding over to the vent. She’d certainly used mind control before, but this large scale, it’d be something else. But, she’d give it a shot. It was probably something like how she extended her powers when she fell into trances. Just some more focus involved. 

She knelt down near the vent, closed her eyes, and conjured a hex. A small one was easy enough, but she could feel the physics of it, the way she’d need to stretch the magic further. She pushed it out thicker and stronger than before, until she could feel the warmth and practically see it light up red. Down into the vents it went, sifting through each fork in the vents until it had reached each apartment.

The magic caught an elderly man first, sitting nearest his vent. She flashed the image of his eyes going red, his posture relaxing. He was easier to keep down, no other urges pushing him elsewhere. Others, children, adults on a task, needed a harder grasp. _Lovely day. Nothing going on. Can’t wait_ for...she let them fill in the rest _._ She sent the thoughts into everyone’s heads. She opened her eyes and focused on her not-injured hand. Her fingertips shook and she could clearly see the outlines of her strained tendons beneath her skin. Something behind her forehead ached. She gave a curt nod toward Zemo, and exhaled when he went inside. 

She watched him slink through the apartments through the eyes of those caught in the hallways. _No one’s here. Lovely day. Nothing going on. Can’t wait for._ God, she really wanted to rub her temples. She thought about her fingers getting stuck the way they were.

_No one’s here. Lovely day. Nothing going on. Can’t wait for._

She still had her hex in Sommer, even as Zemo led him out the door by a gun. He strained against her control, and she strained right back. _God, Zemo, can you start running?_ Third floor to second floor and Sommer was thrashing against her and a child wanted desperately to cry but if she let go of one she’d let go of them all Sommer was panicking he wanted to panic so bad so bad she wanted to panic—

_No one’s here (Pietro’s gone). Lovely day (you’re still alive). Nothing going on (so long as you keep it together). Can’t wait for (this man to start really panicking)._

She winced and took a deep breath. Her muscles were sore, but she’d worked through worse workouts. Zemo was on the first floor. Walking out. On the street. Sommer in the back. He gave her the signal.

She released everyone’s minds with a gasp and rush of ache everywhere from her fingertips to her shoulders and up to her head. She took a deep breath and descended down the fire escape. The jump down was a little hard on her knees, and everything started to get a little unsteady. 

God, she really hoped she did all that correctly. She lurched the car door open and got inside, eager for the relief of not supporting her own weight. Everything was spinning now, no denying it. Zemo started to drive.

“You okay?” Zemo asked in Sokovian.

Wanda took a deep breath. “Lightheaded. I’ll be fine.”

She glanced at Sommers in the front seat. Bag over his head, Zemo holding a gun against his head. Not the best way to drive and threaten. 

“I can take him,” Wanda said.

“Just get your bearings. He’s not going anywhere.”

Wanda tried to bear it, but ended up clambering around the back and found a flat half-full bottle of Coke. Not the best solution, but it’d do for then. Jesus, thanks to Strucker for not readily informing her how her own powers interacted with her metabolism the way Pietro’s did. She’d have to remember to bring juice along now too. God, between her and Pietro, she’d turn into some mobile picnic—

_Pietro’s dead. You carry for yourself._

#

Zemo parked them at an abandoned storefront they’d found out just beyond the town Sommer lived in, no hitches from the car ride. He took Sommer by a chunk of his shirt and the barrel of his gun poking against the back of the man’s head. Wanda followed close behind. The floor of the place was littered in torture tools in the form of glass shards and rusted metal. She kept note, just in case. Zemo raised his hand a bit, and she locked the doors with her hexes. She just hoped that Zemo was more intimidating than Pietro. Candy stealing Pietro.

Zemo removed the bag and threw some water onto Sommer to wake him up. For someone who apparently worked with Hydra, he woke up and shook himself off like a scared small dog. 

“Who are you?” he demanded in English. Even his voice was higher than she’d heard on most Hydra agents. 

“A friend pulling you out of retirement,” Zemo responded. “You worked with a lot of big names in Hydra.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Zemo listed off a few names. Wanda could see the nerves start to brew in him, even without looking into his mind.

“Who’s she?” he said.

“Do you recognize her?” Zemo replied. “Shame you don’t keep track of your work.”

She peeked into his mind, and he hadn’t ever worked with her. Which, incidentally, helped. Zemo gave her the signal, and she moved forward, hexes teasing at her fingertips, eyes red.

“Who made her?” he said, struggling against his restraints.

So Strucker did keep them secret. 

“Where would I find files on the Winter Soldier’s missions? It seems no one wanted to translate them to digital,” Zemo said.

“I don’t have anything!”

Zemo grabbed him. “Then which of your bosses does?”

“I don’t know!”

He motioned her forward. She got down on her knee and pressed her fingers against his temple. She didn’t need it, but just to keep him on edge. His mind was so disorganized, but it practically led her to the information she needed. Of course he didn’t know nothing. He had passwords, locations of keys to safes, even some flashes of images of recent Winter Soldier missions. A boss above him, a boss’s boss. Older. And older and older they needed, it seemed.

Wanda pulled away, and Sommer came away panting.

“I wouldn’t say ‘anything,’” Wanda said.

Zemo got a step closer and cocked the gun. They hadn’t discussed whether they were just scaring these people or killing them. She wasn’t sure what’d be better. 

“Got all you could?” he asked her.

“Yeah.”

Zemo pressed the gun to the man’s head. “Do you have a family, Sommer?”

“N-Not of my own.”

“Good.” 

He pulled the trigger. Wanda had never watched someone be shot before, not really. There was more blood than she’d expected. 

“Do we leave him here?” Wanda asked.

The second Hydra agent she’d ever seen killed. It had lost its thrill with Strucker.

Zemo looked around. “Out here, it wouldn’t be necessary. He had a different identity anyway. We just don’t want anyone to think there’s someone out there killing Hydra agents. Too high profile right now.”

He tossed a blanket over the body and that was that. Neither of them had gotten blood on them.

“Did you choose to kill him?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

She got in the front seat this time. “I mean, he gave us the information we needed. Was it anything other than tying up loose ends?”

Zemo fiddled with his keys. “We know what we’re trying to do. If we happen to get rid of a couple assholes who condone human experimentation and haven’t fully separated from a history of mass genocide, I don’t see the harm.”

She didn’t really either.

#

They didn’t check into a hotel that night, and it was a strange comfort. Maybe it was just that day, but she felt more and more comfortable with her role. At the very least, she’d done something useful that day, and Zemo was content to tell her so. They weren’t staying at a hotel that time, so she wasn’t making him pay for her bed. It was feeling more and more like a partnership every day.

“You’re feeling better, right?” Zemo asked her as the sun disappeared beyond the horizon, leaving them bathed in nothing but weak car lights off some deserted road in Hungary.

“Yeah.” She had grabbed a banana at a market on their way back out here, and was determined to peel it perfectly. “Why?”

“Your powers are overwhelming. Can’t imagine what it’s like for you. I wanted to make sure I’m not pushing you too hard.”

“You’re not. In fact, keep pushing. I feel better experimenting with you than I ever did with Strucker.”

“Good.”

The loud ping of a phone startled Wanda, but watching Zemo get startled too was much more of a surprise. He clambered for his phone, on edge for just a moment before relaxing back to how he’d been before. Even less energetic.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Solicitor. They even text now.”

The car went silent for a moment. Her stomach knotted as she considered whether or not to tell Zemo about the voicemail thing. She caught his gaze in her hesitation. He was back to looking like an average guy, not the calculating soldier she’d seen that afternoon. His hand was still twitching a bit, like he hadn’t gotten a good rush of adrenaline in years. 

“Are you doing okay?” she asked. She looked into his eyes, focusing so hard she could almost pretend she was only looking at the color not the thoughts behind them. “I know you listen to the voicemail from your wife a lot.”

He exhaled, straightening back out. “You know. Grief makes you a little crazy.”

She put a hand over his. Her heart beat so fast she swore it was transferring every reverberation onto him. “You don’t have to hide it, though.” She pulled out her iPod and flipped to the videos. “I found these. He hardly says more than two words, but sometimes even that helps.” She paused. “At least, don’t feel like you have to hide it from me. I’m not going to judge you.”

She looked to Zemo, and his expression was completely unreadable. The anxiety caught her before she could even think to peek inside. She slowly started pulling her hand away. “But it’s private. I understand that.”

He gripped her hand, before she could fully take it back. “Stop.” She did so, language and movement. “Thank you.”

She left her hand there, and as she tried to find where she’d left her banana, she had the strangest feeling she’d committed to something. Didn’t mind much about that either. 


	7. Chapter 7

Pietro only started feeling the pain the moment he locked his gaze on Clint Barton. Sure, the concept sounded ridiculous, but he swore by it. The moment he woke up, he felt nothing. Sensory details came by slowly, a blur gradually clearing into the image of a small white room with a perfectly painted black and white plastic chair facing him. And sitting in that chair was Clint Barton, the middle aged man in the sleeveless get-up, who shot arrows and thought it was a useful skill, and had one hundred percent caused every circumstance that led to Pietro being in this white room.

They made eye contact, and that was when everything started to hurt. He was smacked with awareness of the tubes dug under his skin, the uneven aches all along his torso, and how weak he felt, like his bones were made of glass. 

He groaned and tried to adjust, but he was actually strapped to the bed. Shaking the restraints just sent more pain through him. He shook and shook and shook but the damn things wouldn’t budge. Everything that had ached was beginning to burn, and what had already been burning was eating him alive.

He looked at the chair.

Fucking Clint was still fucking there.

“Can you leave?” Pietro said.

Clint shifted in his seat. The bottom of the chair screeched under the hard floor. “Nope.”

He wasn’t going to say please. “Where’s Wanda?”

“Question of the week, man.”

“Stop being a cunt and tell me where she is. If you have her locked in some Stark ferret cage I’ll personally lodge that squeaking chair through your chest while I find her.”

Clint offered a wry smile. “I knew it’d be a good idea to revive you. You’re just so pleasant.” Clint leaned forward. “You’re not even curious about how you’re alive?”

“Battle wounds.” He exhaled, hoping he wasn’t betraying his pain through his eyes. “Don’t really care. Where’s Captain America? Honestly, I’d take absolutely anyone over you.”

Clint snorted. “Can I ask why I’m so undesirable now?”

“Because I hate you.”

No irony. Not an ounce of anything for old Clint Barton. 

Thank God, someone else decided to walk in around then. In fact, a familiar and not wholly irritating face. The Korean surgeon Ultron had used to build the purple robot that Wanda had freed from mind control last minute. He’d have to thank Wanda for that one. 

“That’s perfect, Agent Barton,” she said.

“Not a new scratch on him,” Clint said, as if that was an accomplishment.

“I don’t know if we were ever formally introduced. I’m Helen Cho,” she said, holding out her hand to shake.

Pietro shook her hand. Helen. Easy to remember. 

“Pietro Maximoff,” Pietro said. “I imagine Ultron stuck to ‘the twins’ and ‘the male.’”

Clint crossed his arms. “So you call me a cunt but small talk is cool with Helen?”

Helen turned to Clint. “You got Steve and Tony?”

“Texted them five minutes ago.”

Captain America, Iron Man, and whatever the fuck Clint’s superhero name was all accounted for. When was someone going to tell him where Wanda was? Fuck, she was definitely in a cage somewhere. No way she wouldn’t have left his side otherwise. He knew he’d do the same for her a hundred times over.

Clint returned to his chair, and Helen checked the machines.

“You sustained forty-seven bullet wounds, most hitting vital organs. The cradle was made for a bit less dire work, but with enough time and some help from your enhancements, we brought you back. You’re very lucky, Mr. Maximoff.”

“How long have I been out?” he asked.

It was dark out, and they’d been in Novi Grad during the day. A few hours, then?

“Three months.”

Shit, so Clint hadn’t been kidding? Wanda was _definitely_ in a cage somewhere.

“Where’s my sister? She didn’t get hurt too, did she?”

Even if he had died or something, he’d definitely get a good laugh out of it if she tripped and got a concussion or something. 

“No, Mr. Maximoff,” Helen said.

Nothing else?

Right around then, though, “Steve” and “Tony” (what the hell was he supposed to call these people?) came running into the room, a good five other Avengers skidding in behind them and flocking outside the tiny room. Well, skidding coming from everyone except the redheaded assassin whose jacket he’d stolen for Wanda; she just kinda strolled up, like she was there out of obligation.

“Great to see you’re doing so well,” Steve said. “How are you feeling?”

“And thus necromancy has entered the modern technological landscape,” Tony said. “You should be proud, Sonic.”

Pietro didn’t know what a Sonic was, nor who to answer. Both their words had seemed stupid.

“Yeah, I’m fabulous. ThanksHelen, thanksfotakingmewhereverthefuckIam, butwhere’smysister?”

All Steve could manage was a long blink. 

Oh, God, these idiots couldn’t even _understand_ him!

It took Tony a moment, but it registered.

“Your sister?” Tony said.

“Yeah, you know the emo girl I was hanging with the whole time? Hard to miss, she can kind of conjure magic.”

It was like Pietro had sucked all the joy out of the room. As if there’d been any to begin with. Smart boy Tony took a step back, leaving Steve to deliver whatever news.

It dawned slowly on Pietro how unhappy Steve looked. What he’d give to read minds. He was taking so _long_ to spit anything out.

“Pietro, we don’t know where Wanda is,” Steve finally said.

What?

“Say it again. My English must be faltering.”

“Wanda disappeared before we made it back to New York.”

Pietro felt the panic clawing through his lungs and throat stronger than any of the pain from whatever they’d done to bring him back to life.

“What do you mean?”

Steve took a deep breath. “Before we even left Sokovia, she jumped off the helicarrier.”

She jumped…off the…

“You’re saying she’s dead.”

He wasn't sure who’d said it out loud. It didn’t sound like his voice.

“We don’t know that,” Steve said. “Your enhancements seem to grow new dimensions each day. We haven’t located a body yet.”

“Have you even tried?”

“We’ve been focused on you.”

His sister might be lying dead in a million pieces from dropping a couple dozen thousand feet above and they thought _he_ was more important? 

“When will you send someone?”

“As soon as we can.”

It didn’t feel like Wanda was dead. It…he just thought it’d have to hurt so much more than it did. He was terrified and anxious, but he didn’t feel like his soul had been ripped out through his mouth. 

“I’m going.”

He made an attempt to get up, but the restraints and Steve held him down. 

“You’re still not healed. I promise once you’re better, you can guide whoever goes in searching for her.”

How long would that be? He felt fucking fine. Sore, but he could run through that. These people were not going to hold him back from Wanda. They hadn’t gone more than a couple hours without each other since they were children. Even Strucker had kept them in the same building. He wasn’t going to stand for more than a few more minutes not knowing where Wanda was. 

“Why did she even jump?” Pietro demanded. “How incompetent are you dumbasses that you can’t even keep track of one person?”

“Pietro, I know you’re angry—”

“I could kill you for what you let happen. If you knew you had this cradle, why did you even let Wanda think for a second that we were going to be separated?” He exhaled. “I dare you to tell me that you told her I was dead.”

Steve hesitated. “I told her that your body was with Clint, and she seemed shaken by it. None of us had any idea. There was so much chaos on the ship and no one was watching her at the time. We’re so sorry. What happened was our fault—”

“She’s not dead!” Pietro shouted. “Stop saying that! Show me her body and I’ll believe she’s dead. Someone just take off these damn restraints and take me back to Sokovia. I’ll find her in ten minutes. You have any idea how easy it is to find her? For God’s sake, IcouldrunaroundsayingIgothersticketstoseeStarWarsandshe’dcomerunning.”

Steve looked to Tony. “I don’t know what he said that time,” Tony said.

“Then start listening faster,” Pietro muttered.

“Pietro, you’re not ready, and we still haven’t figured out how to handle…whether or not to publicize your survival,” Steve said.

“English?” Pietro asked.

“He’s saying you’re an illegal immigrant and probably some kind of weapon or danger to the state so we have to keep you on the down low,” Tony explained. “You and your sister were nothing but ghost stories from Hydra, and nothing has changed that. For now, it’s safer for you if you never existed. So, even if we did want to lead a search party in Sokovia, you can’t just go.”

Were these people serious? “So, what, I’m at risk for getting deported? Newsflash: I’d already be in Sokovia so who’s getting deported?”

“And what if you find her? You gonna Norman Bates her in Sokovia or Norman Bates here over here?”

What did it mean to Norman Bates someone? Steve leaned over and whispered in Tony’s ear. He mumbled something about “old man” and said, “What would you do with her body if you find it? Would you stay in the Sokovian crater or come back here? Corpses of illegal immigrants are even more illegal than live ones.”

Every mention of the word corpse was like a stab right back in the bullet wounds he’d apparently just healed. He swore he was seeing red.

“ _Stop saying she’s dead_!” he yelled. “She’s not dead! If she’s—if she’s dead, you—you’re all dead. We’re—” _I won’t live another second._ “She’s not dead until I see the body.”

Tony threw his hands up palms forward. “Okay, Jesus, we’ll arrange a search party. Just…please take a few Valium for the sake of whoever has to go with you.”

Probably wasn’t the best time to point out that drugs and alcohol didn’t work on him.

#

They released him from their little hospital into their giant glass and stone modern mansion within the hour, and everyone generally avoided him. Or, well, everyone but the purple robot, now jovially named Vision. He kept talking about saving Wanda (thanks, he supposed) and how he didn’t understand why she’d jumped. Pietro had the strangest feeling the android didn’t understand the concept of losing the will to live overriding natural survival instinct, so he just told him that he didn’t know. 

At some point in the endless void of waiting for idiots to gather their lives together, Tony Stark approached him.

“Get your big boy running shoes on. We’re going to Sokovia.”

Oh _God_.

“Where is literally anyone but you?”

“They’re all trying to find Steve’s friend Bucky or something. Rhodes has work.”

Pietro looked to Vision. “What about the robot?”

“Vision needs more training before we let him loose on the world. Plus, he likes watching _Jeopardy!_ and it’s on right now.”

Stupid android and stupid whatever the hell Jeopardy was. 

_Do it for Wanda._

For her, he’d take fifty Tony Starks.

Pietro got to his feet, ignored the lingering pain, and followed Tony back to the quinjet that had shot the forty-seven bullets into his body. Ah, they meet again. And, nice to know, but it didn’t attempt to kill him this time. Guess Ultron was wiped completely from that mainframe. Maybe he should’ve slept before getting on the plane, but whatever.

The quinjet felt gigantic without the full Avengers crew inside. But, looking around at the empty chairs, he could fill in the ghosts. Everyone pulling in earbuds or chatting about current events while him and Wanda huddled together, him trying to comfort Wanda out of a panic attack. She’d relaxed, and spent a solid hour staring at Thor and Vision, like she couldn’t fathom otherworldly things despite being a fucking witch. They’d managed to screw out a bundle of nerves within an hour of landing, and he was still pretty sure no one knew about it. They had never suspected a thing. He’d even planned out elaborate pranks he’d pull on Clint Barton daily to get back at him for dropping Pietro a story and tasering Wanda in the face. 

Yet, there he was in the front seat of the quinjet, next to the man who apparently wasn’t responsible for his parents’ deaths but he was still pretty sure was, and the first thing he did was throw on some song Pietro didn’t recognize, couldn’t understand, and that Pietro was pretty sure was Micheal Jackson but could’ve been Prince. 

“By the end of this trip, you’re going to be so cool, my little Sokovian millennial,” Tony said.

“You do know I’m not killing you because I need a pilot, right?” Pietro replied.

“Hey, if it’s a prison sentence, you could either enjoy it or make it worse. I’m pretty sure you can be tased.”

“You wouldn’t be able to reach for your taser before I had my hands around your neck.”

Tony snorted. “Yeah, says the speedster who couldn’t outrun bullets. You have ways to go, kid.”

Pietro looked away to hide his face reddening. He had the strangest feeling he’d be reminded of that for the rest of his life. And, where was the lie? He was the worst speedster in existence. He should’ve easily been able to outrun those bullets. 

They didn’t talk for the trip there, except for occasional fun facts interjected from Tony. Sometimes Pietro would ask what some song lyric was, and Tony would give it to him. He figured talking about anything else with Tony could easily result in Tony’s death, so he resisted starting anything.

#

Novi Grad was gone. He should’ve expected it, but it was goddamn gone. The city had been ripped from the ground, and the city had landed on suburbs east of the area. He didn’t know what a nuclear bomb site looked like, but he imagined the damage was on par. Maybe worse. Probably worse. A knot formed in his stomach, and he had a feeling it wouldn’t loosen up.

Just setting foot on the land that was once Novi Grad kicked up dirt. Tony had made one transgression that ride saying he ought to wear glasses to keep debris out of his face, and he’d turned that down fast, but now it might actually be useful.

“Wanda!” he called out, as if she was just lying in the dirt somewhere waiting for him.

(because she might be)

Tony sauntered out in his Iron Man suit and went off flying. Pietro went running.

The funny thing about being fast was that, sure, his sense were faster, his body was faster, he could process everything faster, but it didn’t give him enough time. It took him maybe an hour to scan every nook and cranny of Novi Grad and the destroyed suburbs. An hour to realize that Wanda’s corpse was nowhere to be found. Three months, in that time…the body wouldn’t be decayed. If she’d—she’d exploded or whatever, there would be pieces around. And it—

Except it was like the wild wolves from the surrounding area would take the pieces. It was exactly like that. He had absolutely no way of truly knowing what happened to his sister, his love, his everything. All because the fucking Avengers couldn’t keep her on a giant ship for a couple hours.

Pietro stopped running, hoping Tony would catch up. The idiot had gotten some AC/DC song stuck in his head, except he didn’t know the lyrics. Wanda was probably dead, and it was all these idiots’ fault. They’d gone in, and they had _no idea_. It was never even a possibility that they’d ever die separate. After their parents, life looked grim, but there was always the light of spending it together. Without her, what on earth was he supposed to do? He’d been an asshole before these powers, and now he was utterly unlikeable. He had nothing to contribute to the world, not even Wanda’s kindness. God, why hadn’t they just let him die from those bullet wounds? At least then the universe would’ve made sense.

Tony made a landing soon after.

“Anywhere else to look?” Tony asked. “Think she’d go feral?”

He must be talking about the woods. “No. I already checked.”

Tony turned around and stared at something. Pietro moved to take a look, and there were the crumbled remains of Strucker’s castle. How the hell had that survived? God, _why_ the hell had that survived?

She wouldn’t…would she?

He’d check it out. 

“Don’t think,” Tony said.

And then Tony had him in a vice grip grabbing him from under the arms like Pietro was a misbehaved toddler. At least Tony had the decency to throw him to the ground when they landed. He had been ignoring the pain from the bullets for a while, but having that nice meeting with the floor really brought the pain back. Jesus.

“Ugh, I _just_ got out of the hospital, dipshit,” Pietro groaned.

“Just wanted to make sure.”

They walked into the castle together, but Tony veered off within two minutes. Not that Pietro cared. He knew where he was going, and if Tony figured it out, great for him.

He had to convince himself that Wanda was still alive, or he had no idea how he’d survive returning to their old bedroom and rifling through all her old stuff. He wondered what had survived NATO and the Battle of Sokovia. Her makeup? Her clothing? Her books? If they were there, would they still carry some of her with them?

The room was pretty much dilapidated, reduced to a nothingness that practically screamed that there was nothing to find here. Still, he got down on his hands and knees, risked the splinters and glass shards to look. Anything he could find, whether a shirt of hers or a tube of toothpaste would be a treasure. He sounded crazy already.

There wasn’t much to find, either. All his stuff was gone, hers, theirs, all of it. He found a few food wrappers and torn sheets they’d once made love in. He found a few coins in the mattress. God, where was she? This wasn’t happening. He didn’t come back to life only to have his sister gone. He’d already gone through one movie-ready tragedy. He couldn’t have two. Wanda couldn’t be gone. She had to be alive somewhere. He hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye. The last thing he’d said to her was some joke about him being twelve minutes older. She’d told him to go. She wasn’t supposed to go.

When he saw it, he told himself it wasn’t real. It was too convenient. Too real. Too perfect.

The red leather jacket Pietro had stolen for Wanda was lying in the corner of the closet. It was covered in dust, but it was there. He clutched it to his chest, closed his eyes and took in whatever of his sister he could. God, it even smelled like her. He wasn’t confident he wasn’t going to start crying.

Wanda was alive. The only way that jacket could get to where it was was if Wanda had survived the fall and left it there. It explained some of the weirder stuff being gone. In fact…

He slung the jacket over his shoulder and moved to the floorboards, where he kept his secret food and porn stash. He’d checked it when they were with Ultron, and it had still been stocked. The only person who knew about it was Wanda.

The food was missing. Something between a sob and a laugh escaped his lips as he fell to his back, hugging the jacket.

She’d been here. She was alive. She was…God knows where she could’ve gotten in three months, but she was alive.

Suddenly, Tony was in the room. “What’d you find?”

Pietro showed him the jacket. “I found this!”

Tony grabbed the jacket and examined it. A frown grew on his lips. “Oh my God!”

Suddenly and forever, any comment made about the jacket meant the world to Pietro. “What?”

“Wanda got eaten by wolves!”

For a moment, all Pietro could do was stare at Tony, resisting, dear God, resisting, killing the guy. _I need a pilot. I need a pilot._

“There is a pack of wolves twelve miles from here. I could crack your neck, and leave you paralyzed for them to feed on your soft flesh.”

Not exactly friendly banter, but…

“But if I’m paralyzed, isn’t it a mercy killing since I won’t feel their teeth digging into my soft flesh?”

“Fuck you.”

It didn’t matter what Tony said. Pietro knew. Wanda was alive.

Wanda was alive, and he was going to find her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all. If anyone's wondering why it says 2 chapters were added but only one is new, I decided to revise the timeline a bit and added a different chapter 4. So, if you'd like, you can go and read that, but it really only adds to the Wanda grieving development and pushes the events of ch. 5-6 to August '15 rather than May '15, which matches up nicely to this one. Everything otherwise is the same as the previous version. Just more. :)
> 
> Comment if there's any weird discrepancies that I didn't switch between the versions. I believe I caught them all.


	8. Chapter 8

Wanda

Zemo and their newest Hydra agent spoke in German. It was everything one would expect—they were in Germany, the agent was German—yet Wanda found the whole experience surreal, like she’d bought a movie in the wrong language. 

She could understand it, though. Sometime in the past three months, she’d casually mentioned it to Zemo, and he’d thought it was both an easy addition to their routine and paramount to their work. He was teaching her the Latin alphabet as well, but she’d picked up auditory German far faster. Still too nervous to speak it, but she could understand even the stuttering German of Klaus Braun as Zemo worked his magic.

Wanda kept an eye inside Braun’s mind while Zemo worked. This one didn’t seem like he was ready to crack. They’d dealt with a few like that over the past few months—often seasoned, the kind who either were ultra-loyal to Hydra or feared Hydra enough to keep their cool. The squirrelier ones were more interesting, but often had much less to say. Regardless, they hadn’t gotten much information in the way of big secrets.

She caught Zemo’s eye for a moment as he paused the interrogation. He settled a hand into his jacket pocket and let the gun hang loosely in his grip.

“Incredible, isn’t it, the thought that a man could survive that many freezings. That much wear…”

She watched as Braun’s mind flew to what he knew of the Winter Soldier as Zemo continued on. He flashed old images, the eighties at earliest, she estimated. Nothing direct, though. He remembered talking to superiors about the Winter Soldier. Some big mission in the early ‘90s. Something about the name Karpov. A stout brick building in the woods. It didn’t feel far. The reel went quickly, and soon he was back to focused on Zemo’s face, half-processing what he said. Done, then.

She nodded up at Zemo, and he ended what he was saying. 

“Are you going to kill me, Colonel?” Braun asked Zemo.

Not that Zemo had ever found pleasure in the dirty work, but lately he’d begun looking downright wary of it all. Somehow, it’d seemed so much easier to find their dirty secret through the Hydra agents. 

“Wouldn’t that be too easy?” Zemo replied.

He had a family. Part of Zemo’s code. Wanda jumped out of her seat, heart hammering. They’d been playing around with her powers, and had figured she could start wiping memories. But, the first time she’d tried it, she’d fried the guy’s brain, enough to where the family they’d been trying to help out walked back home to a catatonic husband. She’d perfected it, but the procedure still made her nervous. She shot the quickest glance at Zemo, _kill him if this goes wrong_ , and he nodded. 

She approached Braun, one hand on his shoulder to steady herself and the other on his forehead. The more contact, the more balanced she was, the more likely it’d work. She focused on his hairline, even as she knew his eyes were widening.

“You’re the enhanced Sokovian girl. The witch.”

She knew every word of that German _perfectly_. 

She wiped his mind clean of the last hour or so. Her hand wavered; the hex was warm and ready to go, but she had a mental block. It’d be so easy, just erase every memory he had of her. Erase the enhanced twin, the Sokovian witch, everything she’d once encouraged them to cut her up and turn her into. But, there was the calm part of her, the part she’d cultivated with Zemo, that said it wasn’t worth the risk. That she might cause irreparable damage. That she’d been stepping out of line. 

She pulled away, and Braun looked up at her with big, empty eyes. He blinked a few times, and Wanda pulled away. 

“Who a—?”

She and Zemo were gone before he could finish the phrase. He could find his own way back.

“What’d this one say?” Zemo asked after they’d put a mile or so behind them.

“He hadn’t interacted directly with the Winter Soldier. But, he remembers some big mission from the ‘90s, someone named Karpov, and some building in the forest in Germany.”

“I’ll look into Karpov. The name doesn’t sound familiar.” He paused. “Anything else on this building in Germany? I’m sure Hydra has a lot of bases around here.”

“It’s…” She shook her head. “His memory didn’t give enough context clues. I’m sorry.”

It was one of the reasons that the traditional interrogation Zemo did was so important. People often didn’t think the name of locations they visited, and it didn’t come from just peering in. She had a lot of weird powers, but manipulating actual thoughts and searching around someone’s brain like the guys in _Inception_ wasn’t her game. 

“Don’t worry about it. We can look at the files and see if anything matches.”

He never sounded upset or frustrated. What she’d give to get a reaction out of him. The way he acted sometimes, it was like he could drop it at any moment. 

They parked along the side of the road and the two of them climbed into the back for an impromptu work station.

“You been working on those picture books, Maximoff?” Zemo asked as he pulled up whatever relevant Hydra files he could find from the leaks.

It felt somewhat ridiculous to be given the assignment to read children’s books, but she sure couldn’t read her actual reading level books yet. 

“You’re with me twenty-four/seven. Wouldn’t you know if I wasn’t doing my homework?”

Zemo gave her a look. “I’m not staring at you twenty-four/seven. Nor can I really tell if you’re actually reading.”

She cracked open the book, something about a scary-looking baby bat named Stellaluna. Stellaluna got separated from her mother, was taken in by birds, and struggled her whole life because she could never be a proper bird. She’d been reading it for a few days, and it only sunk deeper and deeper with every read. Even if it ended well in the end. She knew her mother was never going to find her and teach her the value in being different.

The pictures in the book were so hyperrealistic, sad in a way. It was already so somber in its coloring and subject matter, she figured it would need to be cartoonish to be read by kids. Zemo had found them in the seat pocket of his car, told her not to ruin them. 

Touching the books, she could feel the hundreds of times Zemo’s or Zemo’s wife’s hands had brushed over the paper reading to Finn. In the stillness, she could even feel the anxiety from Zemo, that fight to contain his grief and discomfort at having the books out. She tried to ignore it for a while, just to not call attention to her being an empath. It was awkward, unnerving even, whenever he remembered that she had full access to his mind. But, this wasn’t just a wayward feeling of frustration. Zemo didn’t talk about his family, but when he felt their loss, he goddamn felt it. The residual memories off the books mixed with Zemo’s reaction was almost sickening. 

Eventually, she couldn’t take it. She put it away and crawled over to him. She could transcribe them later onto something less triggering. Just…as soon as she figured out how to write in Latin letters without using too many strokes.

“Might’ve found your place,” Zemo said.

They’d have to hike a bit to gain access, but nothing more than they usually did. 

His mood shifted, and she could admit to herself that she was relieved to have the heavy cloud of grief off both their shoulders as he got into soldier mode. 

#

The facility Zemo had found was rundown, rusted and made with chipped bricks. She imagined there was something more interesting below, but it seemed so decrepit that even that was a stretch. Zemo broke through a fairly fortified lock with ease, and they padded their way in. The place was stripped bare, nothing more than a warehouse. 

Zemo took hard steps, slamming his foot against the floorboards then pausing to hear the echo. He motioned her over.

“Your psychometry; do you feel anything in here?” he asked.

Wanda shut her eyes and placed her hand on the floorboard. She thought she felt an energy, but it could’ve easily been her hoping to sense something. It wasn’t as organic as it should be. 

“Is there something down there?” she asked.

He dug his nails into the sides of the floorboard and pulled it up. A few more up, and there was a trapdoor.

“Couldn’t even afford an elevator,” Zemo mumbled.

Had Strucker had an elevator? The most prominent feeling Wanda could remember venturing into his secret laboratory with Pietro was horror. Horror in the moment she and Pietro discovered what they were working for, horror every time she looked back at what she caused with Tony Stark. No, she had no idea if there had been an elevator. She figured stairs.

“What five star Hydra facilities have you been to?” Wanda replied.

Zemo started down the ladder below them, Wanda following a few rungs above. 

“Wanda, _Sokovian_ intelligence facilities at least had a password to gain entrance to the secret spots.”

“Maybe there’s another layer.”

Zemo snorted. “Well, then I hope you remember your Hydra passwords.”

“Hail Hydra or the special occasion Hail Hitler?”

Zemo offered her a hand to get off the ladder, and even this long along, she felt his touch from her fingertips to her spine. It didn’t remind her of Pietro, it didn’t have the emotion and history behind every touch, but it was…comforting. They’d gotten past the point where touches were unexpected. At least, she’d remember that after a few seconds. He was gentleman, and she appreciated it. Pietro had been a selective gentleman, treated her like a queen but treated everyone else somewhere between lukewarm and downright horribly. Zemo had rubbed her as the type who was pleasant toward everyone. Pietro did more for her, made her feel more loved and secure in one touch than someone could do in a week of hugs and listening, but Zemo’s consistency was nice as well. 

The floor below had several file cabinets, conference tables, and chairs. There was a VHS player, an old television, and a faded hydra on the ceiling. Zemo went to sweep the floor again, and she moved toward the cabinets. She opened up the drawers, and they were empty. There was one last on the end that needed a key.

She conjured a hex to serve as a bump key and got the first one open. There was just scrap paper and office supplies inside. Why lock that?

“Zemo, what’s that trick with false bottoms?” she asked.

“Wedge a pen into the edge.”

She did everything right, got the false bottom off, but there was nothing in the bottom.

“Anything?” he asked.

“This place is bullshit.”

“Must be defunct. Here, I’ll do a full sweep.” He glanced up at the television. “Hydra didn’t have any videos in the leak.”

Videos. Could you transfer VHSs into digital? She supposed it was possible. So, whatever videos they watched there…maybe that was top secret stuff. The stuff that if needed, they could destroy with a fire. No Black Widow or Zemo could get a hold of it with a few keystrokes.

She dropped to the floor, her gaze falling onto the hydra on the ceiling. Mindfulness and meditation had become pretty significant parts of her routine, but she’d always held back on the visions during the day. Something always felt wrong about the whole thing, like it stretched beyond what she could see. But, Zemo thought her psychometry was useful. She could still be herself with her powers. She thought.

She shut her eyes and started deep breathing. Her hands went to the floor. Cold, smooth, lifeless. What if she never gained control over it? What if she just fell in and out of it? She didn’t know what that power did. She didn’t know what she did. For all she knew, she hurt people in that state. If she didn’t learn to control it, she’d be a walking weapon. Scarlet Witch. 

Her eyes flew open and she looked to Zemo. He was still breaking false bottoms off cabinets, looking like the military intelligence officer he was. Because that’s what he was, what he’d always be. She couldn’t ask him what he thought she should do. He didn’t understand what it felt like to have that energy from the scepter buried under his skin, left with the knowledge that he’d never be fully human again. 

Only Pietro understood that. Except Pietro was dead. It was all her fault. He said so. 

She looked back up at the hydra. The red started to blur and brighten. She felt herself rise,barely enough to know it. The red snapped back into perfect focus, like it’d been painted the day before. The room was suddenly loud, buzzing in the sound of many German voices. She couldn’t understand a word of what they were saying. She looked around, and the tables were spotless, covered in files and half-empty coffee mugs. Machines beeped around them. The television was alive, playing a tape. She tried to focus on the tape, but suddenly the room was boiling hot. All around her, everything blurred. Everything except the hydra on the ceiling. That was crystal clear, alive even.

Alive, even.

The hydra thrust a tentacle out toward her. A scream caught in her throat.

Everything went black, and then she was back on the floor of the cellar with Zemo. Silent, run down, familiar. Her body was warm, and she could sense the presence of her hexes even behind her eyes. 

Wanda sat up slowly, and a shiver ran down her spine. Zemo was staring at her, eyes wide, completely and utterly guard down, given up on answers _bewildered._

“What happened?” she demanded.

He looked up at the ceiling. “That didn’t look like that before.”

She looked up at the ceiling, and the hydra symbol was pristine.

…just like in her vision.

_I did that._

She didn’t know how she knew, but she just knew. She’d…God knows how, or why, but had brought the hydra from the past to the present. 

“Is anything else different?” Wanda asked.

Zemo shook his head. “Just that.”

“Do you know when it showed up?”

“Your eyes turned red, your hexes came out, but you didn’t touch anything. It was like you were possessed. But, that…”

Wanda rolled over to her knees and back to her feet. 

“Are you scared of me?”

He shook his head again, this time as if warding off a bad memory. “No. Just surprised.” His lip curled up as if to smile, but didn’t quite make it. “You really are more powerful than Hydra ever realized, aren’t you?”

_More than I ever knew._

#

The car ride over, Zemo actually left the radio on, as if he was scared of silence engulfing them. 

“Did you consciously make that happen?” he asked.

“I…I just remember in the vision, the hydra came to life. I saw it the way it ended up in the vision, but I never sat there and thought ‘let’s make the hydra painted better.’”

“You did that, though.” He rubbed his stubbly cheek. “It feels like it should be so easy to understand what happened, yet…”

“What would that mean, if I brought the paint from the past into the presence?”

“You manipulated time and space?”

She didn’t even understand physics. 

“Do you think I should keep trying it?”

Pietro would’ve known how to help her.

“Do what you’re comfortable with.” He paused. “I couldn’t find any VHSes there, but it’s curious that they have the players. Maybe we’re taking the wrong approach talking to people.”

“Or we need to start asking people where they keep the secret tapes.” She bit her thumb nail. “Did you learn anything about the name Karpov?”

“Not yet.”

He pulled into a parking lot, far before any sort of hotel or inn. She started lowering her seat into a makeshift bed, but Zemo stopped her. “We’re just throwing stuff away.”

She watched as he picked up his pile of picture books. Picked them up, shut the door, and started walking toward the dumpster that was suddenly prominent in the lot.

“Zemo, what’re you doing?” He didn’t respond. “Helmut!”

It felt so strange with his first name on her lips. 

She got out of the car. 

“We’ll get you an English newspaper. You don’t need to read these anymore,” he replied.

“They’re your son’s. I don’t care if I read them or not.”

“They’re a security blanket. I can’t look back and see him all the time. They should’ve gone with him. I can’t focus with all these mementos. I need a clear head for this. These books are the first things to go.”

Wanda’s gaze flitted between the books and the dumpster. It wasn’t like she didn’t know what he meant. She’d _felt_ what he meant. Even without focusing, the pain of looking at those books was devastating. He didn’t deserve that pain, even if it was a pure pain that bloomed from love. They had a job to do, and for the time being, Zemo’s move made sense. Perhaps he feared his family wouldn’t have wanted him to be doing this.

Perhaps Pietro would’ve felt the same way.

She felt the thought like a stab in the gut. Her vision faltered as she stared at the arrows running along her arms. She didn’t have any of Pietro’s possessions besides the jacket. She wasn’t going to throw away his picture—that was her one physical reminder of their parents—but the jacket…

Wanda watched as Zemo dropped the books into the trash. Were there any other possessions he was hiding? Would she be weaker to keep the jacket? She knew the answer. It was making her weaker. Every time she looked into the mirror and saw that jacket, she was just reminded of the love she lost, the love that no body count would bring back.

Maybe it would help to get it out of her sight.

She approached the dumpster and unzipped the jacket.

“What’re you doing?” Zemo asked.

“Tossing the extra weight. You’re right. We need to be more focused.”

“Isn’t that all you have of him?”

She felt the tears burn in her eyes. She pulled it off. “Aren’t those all you have of them?”

Wanda held the jacket over the dumpster with a trembling hand. She just had to do it. 

She willed her muscles to unclench, but she couldn’t do it.

“Wanda…” Zemo’s voice was soft. “You don’t have to do anything. I just—I still have my voicemail from my wife. I have my one thing. You keep your one thing.”

She pulled the jacket back and zipped it snug against her. It felt like a fur jacket in the cold of Sokovian winter. She wiped her tears on her sleeve.

He looked back at the dumpster once, then they returned to the car.

He got back into the driver’s seat, slammed the door shut, and drummed his fingers along the steering wheel as she got back in. She watched as he blinked a few times and wiped his eyes against the back of his hand. But, the moment was fleeting. Zemo sighed, turned on the engine, and started driving.

“Karpov,” Zemo said. “He must’ve worked on something important.”

Zemo worked quickly. She wondered if it hurt to be that quick to smother.

“Does he go by another name?”

“We’re about to find out.”


	9. Chapter 9

Zemo drove them right to a favorite hotel outside of Dresden, a humble, tucked away establishment that boasted good coffee downstairs and free WiFi. Really, people like them’s dream. 

“ _Guten tag_ , Marya,” the young man working at the reception desk said as she and Zemo walked in.

“ _Guten tag_ , Alex,” Wanda replied. “ _Wie läuft das geschäft_?”

He smiled, and said something along the lines of good. She smiled at the thought that she’d finally said two lines of small talk without confusing anyone. Then again, all the Germans, even the scary looking ones, had responded positively to her speaking German. Zemo, in fact, threw out the least smiles while teaching her. She didn’t blame him; Sokovian trait. They tended to lean toward Russians in terms of stoicism. 

Zemo sweet talked the passing housekeeper for some extra towels, and they were back at their room.

“Your German’s improving every day,” Zemo said. “Your confidence with it as well.” He set his coat on the desk chair. “You sure you didn’t learn in grade school?”

“They were teaching English when Pietro and I left. I guess they might’ve taught a third language in secondary school, but not then.” She shook her head. “If anything, I might’ve picked it up from Strucker.”

“He spoke to you in German?”

“No, English, but a lot of his workers spoke German.”

“Regardless, you’re good.”

No one besides Pietro and her parents had ever really complimented her. It felt better than she knew it should.

“You’re a good teacher.”

Zemo gave her a look. “I tried teaching five kids under my command basic German for a job out there, and two came out with enough confidence and skill to converse with the people. It’s talent from the pupils, not the teacher.”

“You had to teach five of your officers in a high level Sokovian military intelligence team how to speak German?”

“Have you ever known Sokovia to properly fund anything?” Certainly not welfare programs. “It made more sense in context.” He pulled out his computer and started his clicking and scrolling. 

“What context?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Just educational background.”

She’d always assumed he went to university, but somehow the bone he’d thrown her, no matter how unappetizing it was, had her. “Where did you study?”

“Kuznetsov University.”

Private university. Big. Papa had mentioned one of his cousins went there. The smart one.

“What’d you study?”

He flashed one of his half-smiles. The spark of happiness tinged in melancholy flew right over to her. He’d met his wife in university. “Computer science and electrical engineering while I did an pre-military officer program. Almost got a minor Slavic studies. I accidentally registered for a German literature class, but first day, I couldn’t convince myself to leave.”

She could only hope she was projecting the fact that he didn’t need to say what he meant by his wife. She knew. God, she knew.

“It must’ve been incredible, that kind of education.”

“Yeah.” He looked up at her. “A blessing, for sure.” There was a long pause. Wanda knew it wasn’t practical, but she wished Zemo would get her a piece of shit computer, tablet, anything, so she could thumb through files and look busy too. “What neighborhood did you live in when you were a kid? Wanda?”

Wanda startled. She probably should’ve realized it before, but it seemed like every other time she thought Zemo was talking to her, he wasn’t and it was just some noise her powers were bringing out.

“I uh, lived near hundred and fifth. Over by the Orthodox church.” She paused. “For ten years, anyway. After that, we practically lived in every area that wouldn’t kick us out. But, we tended to stay as close to the quieter neighborhoods as we could. Spent a lot of time in that park over on the west side. You know, the one with the wooden pirate ship that was laid out above the thin rubber that every kid broke a bone falling off of?”

Zemo furrowed his brow. “Was that the park with the metal rocket ship that barely cut the holes on each level away from each other? The one that boy fell from the top hole to the ground and died?”

Wanda nodded. “That’s the one.”

Zemo pushed his laptop aside. Didn’t close it, but the push-aside was an interesting move for him. “That pirate structure hasn’t changed since I was a teenager. My friend group in high school had one square that took until seventeen to start drinking. We got him drunk up there, he said some stupid shit, and I pushed him off that pirate ship. Idiot landed bad and and sprained his wrist. Sometimes Finn and I would be walking by the park and he wanted to go in so bad, but I’d convinced myself if I let him play he’d get hurt as some karma for what I did as a kid.”

Wanda bit back a smile. “History of violence, much?”

“Youth violence. Shenanigans. Whatever you want to call it. I’m sure you and Pietro got into worse.”

It felt like the first time she’d heard Zemo say Pietro’s name. It stung, but it also felt okay, like he was worthy of uttering her beloved brother’s name. 

She held up her index finger. “Any and all _shenanigans_ were all Pietro. I was so nice to that idiot, and he still taped me up into packages on Chanukah and chased me around with his four-foot Godzilla toy after I said it gave me nightmares as a kid.”

“You ever get back at him?”

She shrugged. “Never really had time. The playfulness dies pretty quickly once you become an orphan.”

Not to mention the fact that right after their parents died, Wanda didn’t have room in her heart to be annoyed with Pietro. In order to survive, she poured all her love and need for reciprocation into him. Sleeping huddled together as children, kisses and sex and delusional talk of a bright future as teenagers. They’d gotten playful at times, but for the most part, the crueler childhood pranks and rivalry had dissolved as they became more than siblings to each other.

“So, not a playful relationship, but he made you happy?”

“Happier than I’ve ever known.”

For a moment, she swore Zemo caught it. The way her voice got higher, the way everything seemed lighter for just a moment knowing that she and Pietro had been that happy together, and that somehow the knowledge of how taboo it was made the happiness even more saturated. 

She didn’t give him time to realize it himself.

“You don’t talk about your father much,” Wanda said. Even if that was just as worse, in a way. “Were you close?”

Zemo paused for a moment, glanced at his computer, then went back to looking at her. “My mother died when I was around my son’s age, so I don’t remember her much. I suppose I never really missed her. My father filled in the role effortlessly, as far as I could ever tell. We weren’t super close, but we came to rely on each other’s company and were supported by one another. Obviously, I owe him a lot. I was ungrateful to him for a while in my teen years, and took the rest of my life to make it up to him. Bought him the house, made sure he got as much of his grandson’s company as possible.” He crossed his arms. “He was a great man.” He uncrossed his arms, glanced up at her, then back at his computer. He pulled it closer. “So, did we exhaust the family?”

Wanda blushed. “Think so.”

“Here, tell me what you,” he exhaled, “are you tired? It drains you to extend your powers, doesn’t it?”

Really, almost throwing away Pietro’s jacket had been more exhausting, but there was still remnants of tiredness from her vision in the Hydra compound. 

“I’m okay,” Wanda answered. “Are you?”

He massaged his temple. “Just…too tired to think.”

Wanda studied him. So much for god-like invincibility. She’d almost convinced herself. “We have been going for a few weeks now. Nothing’s especially urgent. Might be a good time to take a break.” She spent an instant smiling, although she didn’t know why. “Twelve hours.”

In other words, they wouldn’t be working for the five or so hours they’d still be awake that night. Pietro would’ve laughed at the arrangement minutes ago. 

Zemo shut his computer. “Twelve hours. What’re you up for?”

They ended up bringing a bottle of wine up to the room to share. One of them mentioned something about maybe trying to find a movie to watch, but by the time the bottle was half empty and the world felt warm and almost comforting, she’d personally forgotten all about it.

“Do they teach you how to kill, or is it something you just figure out?” Wanda asked as she poured her third glass. The buzz was going strong, so she’d drink it slowly, but the third glass in and of itself was inducing some panic about how much she’d already consumed.

Zemo swirled his wine around his glass. Third glass for him, maybe halfway done. But, naturally, they were absorbing at different rates. He wasn’t all that different, maybe more introspective.

“No, they teach you the weaponry, the tactical skills, the equipment, the battle plans…hell, they even teach you how to dehumanize,” they spoke Sokovian, for the first time in a while, “But when it comes down to it, you have to have the guts to pull the trigger. They can’t teach you that.”

“Do you feel the hesitancy every time, or is it nothing now?”

He sipped his wine. “Every time. I’d be more worried if I didn’t. I don’t want to feel like God.” He studied her, a different look than he’d ever given her. He looked curious, he looked…interested, somehow. “Is that how you feel? Like God?”

Wanda inhaled, the scent of the wine filling her senses. “No, not God. A monster, maybe. An experiment gone wrong. The thing about power, to make the knowledge that you could cause mass destruction feel like anything good, you have to like yourself first.”

“You don’t?”

“I don’t know myself,” she conjured a tiny hex, “not in this form. I don’t know if I’m still Wanda or not. It’s so easy to see myself as just the witch.”

He held his hand out palm up, and Wanda didn’t know what compelled her, but she dropped the hex and moved to match her hand to his, like kids did in elementary school and she and Pietro used to do when they were bored. It didn’t send a jolt through her or anything, but she didn’t feel a need to pull away. Maybe there was a jolt.

“You seem pretty human to me. You seem young, observant, sharp, gentle…” he glanced up at her, “hesitant. Not robotic, though. Not monstrous.” He laughed a little. “Also, anyone who can passionately lament Sokovia’s annual early disqualification from Eurovision is pretty damn normal.”

She couldn’t even remember discussing Eurovision. She wasn’t sure if that was good or not. She felt his heat coming off his hand. “You think?”

“You genuinely seem like a person before a mystical goddess, I promise.”

Wanda’s hand slid off Zemo’s to grab her glass. She took a swig. “I’m not a goddess, I’m an enhanced individual.” She put a hand on his chest. “And you’re…I can’t tell if you’re a spy or an assassin or a military man or a member of IT.”

“IT.”

“Definitely IT. Any siblings?”

“No. Ana wanted to have another, we were trying, but nothing had happened yet. Got busy before everything went to complete shit, so at least I know it wasn’t four of them.” She slid her hand off.

Wanda took another sip of wine. “It’s such a holistic loss, losing parent, spouse, and child all at the same time. Hurts like a bitch.”

“You know?”

Wanda nodded. “Course I know. What do you think Pietro was?”

He shook his head. “He’s your brother, isn't he?”

One word managed to break through the fog, more sobering than any cold shower or coffee.

_Stop._

She did. Went back to talking about something else. Kept talking until the bottle was empty and she couldn’t see up from down so she just closed her eyes until the ceiling and Zemo’s warmth and perception itself floated away.

#

Naturally, the next morning wasn’t pleasant, but Wanda did what she had to do. Bucked up, accepted Zemo’s offer for a coffee, and accepted Zemo’s computer for the five minutes he left the two of them alone while he picked up the coffee.

Zemo had left all the files with the name Karpov open. He worked closely with the Winter Soldier, and headed the Winter Soldier program. There must’ve been some weird German wording because there was a Winter Soldier program established in 1944, but there was also a Winter Soldiers program established in 1991. Fuck German spelling. Fuck spelling. Why hadn’t some Hydra intern fixed that? 

“Zemo, did you figure out why there are two Winter Soldier programs?” Wanda asked as they exchanged the laptop for coffee.

“I’d say it was discontinued, but then what on earth were they doing with Barnes during some break between 1944 and 1991. Not sure.”

“Maybe the program changed. Were there any more Winter Soldiers?”

Zemo squinted at something on the screen, and his eyes widened. “It doesn’t say Winter Soldier on the 1991 program. It says Winter Soldiers.”

Wait, so that wasn’t some annoying typo?

“That’s not a typo?”

“On files this classified? No way.”

Wanda paused.“Can they make more than one Winter Soldier? How’d they make Barnes?”

“Serum.” He shook his head. “Why wait until 1991 if they had access to more serum? Unless…” _They found a new batch of serum in 1991._

“But does that help us?”

Zemo didn’t even startle at her finishing his thought for him. “It does.” He pulled up another file. Howard Stark. “Interesting coincidence, don’t you think?”

Howard Stark had recreated the serum by 1991. 

“Do you think…?”

Zemo nodded. “Hydra and Stark met in 1991. Karpov is the guy who’d deal with the serum, and his favorite lackey was Barnes. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a connection to be found.” Zemo clicked back to the Karpov file. “But, of course, no one knows where he lives.”

Wanda sifted sugar into her coffee. “Well, it’s a better shot than asking about Barnes. These rats seem to love giving away their fellow men. Much more than their projects.”

Zemo patted Wanda’s shoulder blades. “You’re a genius, Maximoff.”

Wanda blushed. “Thanks.”

He slid his hand off her, but the heat didn’t dissipate for a while. 


	10. Chapter 10

The hangover nudged Wanda out an extra day of rest before Zemo had them casing Karpov’s location as of the Hydra files. So far they’d been pretty accurate, but with an officer as high ranking as Karpov, Zemo said he wouldn’t be surprised if he’d lied about where he was really living. That the really shitty ones hid their scent well.

Zemo was back to being relatively quiet, but he was now in the habit of keeping the radio on. Music too, thank God. Mama had loved talk radio for some reason, and would always make her and Pietro be quiet so she could hear it. She always listened to the news then turned it off when it reported too much depressing stuff, and switched to some quack relationship advice segment. Even with her parents’ deaths throwing a rosy window over everything her parents had done, she still didn’t view those memories so fondly. 

She focused on the scenery as it passed by, letting the background of her mind take in the music. It was a sort of meditation, and always helpful before they did any work. Even if they weren’t going to go inside. 

Pietro was, naturally, the first thing to pop into her head. She could recall with perfect clarity the first time he dragged her out to the protests against Sokovia’s failing government. The police had come, Pietro had thrown a rotting cabbage at one of the officers in the front lines, and they'd barely scrapped out of getting shot by the bullet that rang out seconds after Wanda had dragged him away. She’d called it the stupidest means of change she’d ever seen, and he said anything to help the country was worth it. When they’d learned about Strucker, Pietro had convinced her with a romanticized image of them gaining military expertise and joining the brave men and women who served Sokovia even through the constant anguish of the failed state. Back when they thought it was legitimate. Back before they knew they were working for Hydra. It had horrified her when she found out, but Pietro had been devastated. So devastated that Wanda believed that Pietro had genuinely, selflessly wanted to serve his country.

That he really was the kind of person who’d let himself die for another. 

She squeezed her eyes shut. Pietro’s death was meaningless, cruel, and idiotic. It wasn’t noble. 

Wanda took a deep breath and focused back on the memory of Pietro. Back when he was alive, back when everything made sense.

It felt like a dream at first, the sudden unfamiliar surroundings, but Wanda adjusted quickly. She knew this place. It was eleven at night, she and Pietro were going to leave Strucker’s facility the next morning. Ten o’clock, enough time to report for breakfast but early enough that they could get a good start before everything was in full swing. 

Only the night guards could be heard padding around them. She and Pietro lay together in mismatched pajamas, spent after a heavy session together in the bath. She’d asked him to do it there, just in case there wasn’t a bathtub at the next place they went. They were supposed to be having pillow talk, but all Pietro wanted to talk about was some book he really, really, really wanted her to read. It was an exhausting day, and Wanda hoped Pietro wouldn’t be mad if she fell asleep to him talking. 

The sound of footsteps woke her. She felt fuzzy but not groggy, so she must’ve not been asleep for long. The aura around the footsteps wasn’t familiar. Fear pumped through her body, even as her mind was already rationalizing away. They were powerful now. There was nothing on this earth that could hurt them.

Or, at least, nothing that could hurt them that’d come into their bedroom at midnight.

Wanda listened hard, tapped into whatever mental sphere Strucker was always talking about. It was quiet. No one was going down screaming. Who was out there?

Pietro tapped Wanda’s shoulder.

“Can you hit him from here?” he asked.

So Pietro wasn’t worried either. Good. 

Wanda stretched, pushed herself into a sitting position, and readied a hex. Her first instinct was to assume it was Stark and the Avengers, but their entrance would be louder than this, wouldn’t it? Strucker hadn’t even sounded the alarms. Was it an exercise? 

The footsteps began sounding from down the hall. A body dropped nearby. Somehow, her first thought was to question why Strucker had their bedroom door guarded at this stage in the volunteer process. The footsteps still sounded. The handle on their door jiggled. Pietro squeezed her shoulder.

The man cracked the door open first, peeked inside as if he wasn’t sure where he was going. Slowly, though, he entered the room. Average stature, maybe even a little shorter than the man Wanda would’ve expected in his fatigues. She couldn’t make out his face. But, most importantly, he was unarmed. He had his hands visible at his sides.

“Please tell me you just murdered Strucker and List,” Pietro said.

Wanda peered into his mind. He was thinking exit strategies, with fleeing passes of mission reports, intelligence reports, her and Pietro’s pictures and names. Everything was framed in a slowness, a shock. 

“You’re Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, right?” he said. His voice was soft, controlled. He spoke fluid Sokovian. She almost didn’t recognize it. 

Wanda let the hex dissipate. 

“Depends on who you are,” Pietro replied, right back in Sokovian.

He pulled something out of his pocket—his wallet. His wallet? 

He tossed them what turned out to be his military ID. He worked for the Sokovian military, colonel. Zemo, Helmut. Pietro took the ID, seemingly glanced at it, and tossed it back to Colonel Zemo.

“What do you want, Colonel?” Pietro asked.

He tucked his ID and wallet away. “I want two Sokovians out of a crumbling Nazi organization and into something more appropriate.”

The night they decide to leave an actual Sokovia-associated man comes to them offering them a job? It was too perfect.

Wanda blinked, and the room went wobbly for a moment, like she wasn’t attached—

“What do you have in mind?” Pietro asked.

“I’m the commander for an elite Sokovian intelligence branch within the military. EKO Scorpion.”

Pietro’s eyes widened. “EKO Scorpion wants us?”

Colonel Zemo nodded. “They’re begging for you two.”

The room was steady again. “Would we be forced to stay?”

Colonel Zemo shook his head. “It’s like any military career. You get paid, benefits,” he looked around, “you’re not locked anywhere.”

She looked to Pietro. If anything, it was the perfect cover to escape. EKO Scorpion was familiar. It was Sokovian. It was what they’d always wanted to do.

Pietro pushed himself out of bed. “We have nothing better to do.”

They already had their bags packed. 

“Do they know you’re in here?” Wanda asked.

“We’ll have to move fast,” Colonel Zemo said.

Pietro laughed. “You get motion sick easily, Colonel?”

Pietro didn’t give Colonel Zemo a chance to answer. Wanda jumped on his back with their bags, Pietro set a hand to support Zemo’s neck, and they were off.

Colonel Zemo stumbled forward, but seemed more disorientated than physically ill. They were outside of Strucker’s castle. The panic from inside the building seemed so far away. Pietro had parked them right by a nondescript van. Two men also in fatigues exited the vehicle. One went to Colonel Zemo and the other just stared at her and Pietro.

“Did you get ‘em?” the staring one finally said.

Colonel Zemo’s companion gave his buddy a look. “Who do you think they are?”

Colonel Zemo disappeared into the truck, saying, “Let’s get going,” as he went.

Get going.

_Get going._

She was suddenly not sitting in the van with Pietro and Colonel Zemo and the other two. She was somewhere beyond, able to see all four of them as separate entities. Like she was watching a movie. Yet, she could still feel Pietro’s arm around her, hear Colonel Zemo speak as if he were right next to her.

_Wanda._

Wanda shot up, unable to recognize the colors, heat, and circumstances around her. Leather seats, moving vehicle, not Sokovia, Colonel Zemo, no Pietro.

Colonel…no…Zemo.

Zemo.

Staring at her. They were at a red light. He wasn’t in his fatigues. Tee shirt, pants, a little bit disheveled. 

One second, everything came back to her. Pietro was dead, Zemo’s family was dead, Strucker was dead, Sokovia was gone, they were hunting the Avengers. Two seconds, and she felt ready to puke. Lightheadedness was swift into nausea, but there wasn’t anything— _it’s all in your head. Calm down._

She took deep breaths and the wave passed. 

“What’ve you been doing?” Zemo asked.

Wanda pawed around the floor until she found her bag. She pulled out a juice and took a sip. Once she was sure she wasn’t going to faint, she started the arduous process of interpreting what had just happened herself.

“How long was I out?” she asked.

“Half an hour.”

That wasn’t a dream. Wanda didn’t know how she knew, but it…it felt real. Like only leaving the world had been an out of body experience. It hadn’t been a dream.

“Do you keep your military ID in the second to the bottom pocket of your wallet?” Wanda asked.

Zemo actually pulled over and stopped the car seemingly to stare at her like she’d grown another head.

“I stopped doing that right before I met you. I tried throwing away my ID, but ended up grabbing it again and just shoving it in. How did you…?”

“You showed it to me. You and your men came to Pietro and I on the night before the Avengers attacked Strucker’s facility.” Zemo had left his wallet in the cupholder between them. Wanda picked it up and pulled out his ID. “You showed us this ID to prove you weren’t just some creep kidnapping us.”

For the first time in so long, Zemo didn’t just look confused, he looked uncomfortable. He fiddled with his shirt a bit before finally making eye contact with her.

“Wanda, you know that didn’t happen, don’t you?”

If it wasn’t a dream, but obviously didn’t happen, what had she seen?

She shook her head. “Must’ve been some weird power thing I don’t understand yet. Are we close?”

Zemo studied her for a moment before turning the car back on. “Yes.”

He didn’t continue the conversation. There were a few times where he’d look over and seem like he wanted to, but he kept silent. She got the vibes. He was completely clueless and felt he had nothing to tell her. 

She dug her nail into the skin of her thumb, focused on the music, and did all she could to stay focused on this world. Because that’s what had happened, right? She’d gone to another world, somehow. Not actively, but she’d been there.

And what a better world it’d been. All these months without Pietro, and she thought she’d missed every bit of him. Yet, there was so much she’d forgotten to miss. She missed the way the hard lines of his muscles matched up against hers. She missed sleeping in the same bed as him. She missed…God, she missed sex. Not just the love and connection and intimacy she got with Pietro. It wasn’t like she hadn’t stolen any wayward moment she could to touch herself into release while Zemo went out to the store. 

But, ignore the fact that she hadn’t been able to do that in close to a month. She missed the performance aspect of it all. The way she could make him squirm, moan, cum under her command. The way she’d moan and say his name. The way he loved it. Just…the way that it wasn’t her who wanted her to cum. She missed the games, the begging, the interaction of sex. The heat, the mushy declarations of love and teasings of who did a better job.

The road they drove on was uneven, and she became aware of how it vibrated the car. She couldn’t kid herself at that point; she was horny. She adjusted her position ever so slightly, tilting her pelvis to feel the sensation the hair better she could manage. Zemo was perceptive, but would he notice what she was doing? There was no way in hell she was going to risk him figuring out if she came, and the frustrations was like running into a brick wall.

She looked over to Zemo. Did he feel the same frustration she was having? Grief had certainly stripped away a good majority of her sex drive, but like the desire to eat and sleep, it was gradually making its way back. It wasn’t like he was that old. 

Then again, maybe he had more self control than her. Maybe he and his wife hadn’t had all that much sex anyway, and he was fine without it. But, no, that couldn’t be right. He’d said they’d been trying for a baby. That was like, the height of married couple sex following a honeymoon. Maybe even more, since there was no reason to not have it every fifteen minutes. 

It was silly, but she couldn’t imagine Zemo the way she knew him having sex. He was too serious, too focused, too invested in future goals to think about present desire and release. But, in a weird way, the Zemo she saw in that other world did. Maybe it was the military fatigues skewing her perception, but there had been something about him at that time. A confidence, a control, an ease in leadership. Any dishevelment seemed more like a tousled adventurer than someone who was too beaten down to care.

Pushed into the seat, mind on the last thing she needed to be thinking about, her gaze traveled to Zemo. She searched his eyes, his posture, his grip on the steering wheel, anything she could for signs of the stranger she’d met in the other world. She bet he wouldn’t fit into his fatigues with how little they ate. Yet, if she gave it a bit of thought, she could imagine the man next to her back in his fatigues, still with that disheveled hair and stubble, with the big ideas and those brown eyes blazing. 

She pressed deeper into the seat. Her eyes went to his crotch—

Heat crept into her cheeks and she shifted any sensation off the seat of her pants. God, she was such a

“ _Slut_.”

She snuck a peek in the back. Pietro sat with his feet propped up, in his arrow pants and Tony Stark’s running shoes and track shirt like he’d been waiting for her to pick him up from Sokovia. 

“ _You think you have the right to be thinking with your clit right now? Go tell him again how you make Stark build the robot that killed his family. He’ll definitely make sweet love to that._ ” Pietro stared at his nails. “ _Or maybe tell that last Hydra grunt you killed. Funny how Zemo doesn’t consider Mom and Dad family. We always did._ ”

_You’re not real._ The talking Pietro hallucination hadn’t showed up for a while. How naive of her to think she’d learned how to control it.

“Should I keep asking you if you’re okay?” Zemo asked.

Wanda hoped she wasn’t blushing. “Go ahead.” She paused. “But I am.”

He nodded. “Good.”

_Slut_. Did thinking about another man, even for a split second, make her one? She felt horrible enough for the name to stick.

They did their casing. There was indeed someone home.

Zemo said they’d hit him the next day. He needed a few supplies.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew sorry it took so long to update, guys! I was focused on writing an original novel but now that that's done I should have more time to write this. Hope everyone enjoys!

Wanda had managed to calm herself down by the time she and Zemo returned to the hotel room for the night. No remnants of the desire, just a sheen of embarrassment of it having even happened. She was lonely and clearly not fulfilling her own needs, and it was somewhere between stupid and dangerous to see him as anything but a work partner. They lived in too close of quarters, they were too important to one another to risk any of that. Besides, she wasn’t _attracted_ to him. Not after someone like Pietro. She was desperate, and her mind was playing even more tricks on her than usual. 

Besides, there was no way in hell Zemo wanted her back. The way he kept himself, he could resist a harem. He’d hidden it well, but there were still moments where he feared her. He could say the opposite all he wanted, but part of him saw the Scarlet Witch over her. 

As soon as the door to their hotel room closed, Zemo moved over to his computer and started typing. Wanda’s gaze fell on him for a few moments, but she had just enough sense to avert her gaze and return to her own bed. She hadn’t worn Pietro’s jacket that day, and found herself pulling it over her upper half like a blanket.

“Rough day?” Zemo asked.

She sat up. Zemo had set his computer aside, had his full attention on her. “Not sure what you mean.”

“You’ve been distant, and there’s the jacket. You had switched out for a few days.”

Was it the time to bring up the vision?

“I’ve been thinking about him a lot today. I’m not sure why. It’s not a special time or anything.”

Zemo glanced at his phone, then back to her. “When it gets bad, I think about him every time I pick something up. I wouldn’t be concerned, but I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

She shifted. “I am. Thank you.” Zemo hadn’t initiated talk about their dead loved ones in a while. “How did you become part of EKO Scorpion?”

Zemo shrugged. “Becoming a member of IT or an engineer seemed too boring, too conformist for me. I was more idealistic when I was younger. I looked at Sokovia and thought that there was still hope that it could get better. I didn’t have the charisma for politics, so I thought military would be the way to go. Back then, everyone went into the military, so I stood out for being passionate about it and educated. I rose through the ranks, and then they gave me the offer.” He rubbed his wrist. “A few years into the work, our leader was killed. I was the first one to organize everyone and we didn’t lose anyone else. My superior was impressed, and I was promoted. A little traumatic, but I made it work for a long time.”

Wanda looked to the blank TV, imagining the countless shots she’d seen of leveled Novi Grad. “Do you think your job would still be there if you went back?”

Zemo shifted. “I’m never going back. There’s nothing there left for me. Ultron may have had his own thoughts, but as far as I’m concerned, God chose to destroy Sokovia for a reason. I’m done.”

“You don’t think they’ll ever rebuild?”

“No one cares enough about Sokovia to rebuild it.”

“Even if your family is buried there?”

Two months ago, she couldn’t even fathom saying that. Yet, once the initial shock wore off, she wasn’t utterly horrified to watch him react. 

“I can’t place value in their bodies now,” he said. His gaze settled on the phone. “You know that.”

He looked to her as his words settled in. No, she didn’t have a body. She truly, truly had no reason to ever return to Sokovia. “Sometimes I feel Sokovia is more than just those deaths. I know how little it ever did for me, but it’s still where I’m from, you know? It’s my country, and I’m not ashamed of that. I just…can’t imagine the weight of ever going back there alone. I’m scared of that. Being in these countries I’ve never been to, and my powers go crazy, start showing me shit that isn't there. Being in Sokovia, I know everything would bulldoze me.” She sighed. “If I were normal, I’d go back one day. Like this,” she conjured a hex, “I don’t think I can.” 

“Why not?”

She the jacket suddenly wore heavy on her. It was the jacket Pietro had been wearing when they first attacked the Avengers. When it became certain that they’d destroy their country. 

“I caused it be to destroyed.”

Zemo didn’t speak for a moment. Two moments. Three. It went on. She didn’t even need peeks into his mind to know. He was thinking about it, about how if it wasn’t for her, his family would be alive. 

“You dropped a building on them?”

It took Wanda a moment to process what he’d said. She turned to him, holding back the pain in her chest. 

“I helped.” He blinked, almost as if he hadn’t expected her to keep protesting. “We all helped in some way. I don’t know which of them dropped Novi Grad. Are you willing to hurt all them to take revenge?”

He reached across the divide of the beds to lay a hand on her knee. “I don’t blame you. End of story.” He retracted his touch. “My son might have been mad we aren’t sparing Iron Man, though. He loved all of Stark’s toys.”

His demeanor shifted. A joke melted in the sorrow. The jolt of unsureness, the pinch of fear. The second of panic. All wiped away with the rational thoughts, the _focus_ as he turned away from her and started his work. The mission was still on for the next day.

She thought about family before falling asleep that night.

#

Wanda didn’t quite feel refreshed the next morning, and she couldn’t recall exactly why. Remnants from a dream were heavy in her head, but she couldn’t piece anything together. Brief images were clear, but she couldn’t figure out what the subject matter had been, or even if it’d been a good dream or a nightmare. 

She actually hadn’t had a nightmare in a while. Maybe Pietro was watching over her. Old memories suddenly surfaced among the morning haze, including incidents where she’d seen the souls of dead animals while training with Strucker. God, if she couldn’t bring Pietro back, she’d take his ghost in a heartbeat. Not the venom-spewing hallucination, the real thing. 

“Hey Wanda, do you sleepwalk?” Zemo asked.

Well, that was one was new. She rubbed the sleeps out of her eyes and turned to Zemo to answer. He seemed stiff and deflated, like he’d hardly slept that night. 

“I don’t think so,” she replied.

He ran a hand through his hair, pushing a few stray stands out of his eyes. “Last night, you sat up, turned to me, told me my son had my eyes, and went back to sleep.”

It was like someone had cleared the dust off an old photo. So it wasn’t just that one time. So she could visit the same time more than once.

She’d gone back to the world where Pietro, Zemo’s wife, and Zemo’s son were alive. Memories flooded back. In that world, she’d met them after Zemo drove them away from Strucker. Everything had been so real: the bags under Zemo’s wife’s eyes, his modest house in Novi Grad, the way his son smiled when he came home to greet Zemo. Pietro’s touch as he held her hand the whole way in. Was…Was that world real? 

If it was a movie, it would’ve been fairly obvious. Some other timeline, like in _Back to the Future_. 

But, in that hotel room in Germany without Pietro, it sounded ridiculous. She couldn’t imagine saying it to Zemo. 

Yet, what choice did she have? He was the only person now who interacted daily with her and her powers. He’d encouraged it. He should expect this. Plus, after that brief outburst of vulnerability the day before, she was starting to be okay with the idea of telling him everything.

“I had a vision last night. I don’t even know if that’s there right way to describe it. It was more real than a dream or vision. But it was us, in a world where you took us from Strucker before the Avengers arrived.” She watched as the realization seeped into Zemo’s features. “In that world, everyone’s alive. I met your wife and son there. I…must’ve still been somewhere between last night. Remembering what I saw.” She looked away, before he could to hide the pain. “It’s stupid. Just my powers acting up. It’s nothing to worry about.”

_What did they look like? Were we happy there?_

“So, you don’t know exactly what your enhancements were?” Zemo asked instead.

“There was a lot I never told Strucker. It goes so far beyond just the mind reading and mind control and the energy blasts. But I never knew what potential came from the other, more abstract powers, so I never bothered telling him.”

Zemo rolled off the bed and onto his feet. “For all you know, then, your enhancements involve solving one of the biggest theories in modern physics?” She didn’t look like she knew what he was talking about quickly enough. “It’s just a theory that for every decision anyone makes, there’s a parallel universe.”

Wanda peeled herself out of bed. “You think science can explain my powers?”

Zemo genuinely rolled his eyes. “Science, magic. A Norse god drops from the sky every few years to save the world from aliens.”

Wanda laughed a little. “We’re hitting Karpov today, right?”

“Yeah.”

His gaze lingered on her for a moment. Not quick enough for her to not get his flashes of fear and awe. 

She wasn’t sure what resonated longer.

#

Zemo got himself some zip-ties, a cloth, chloroform, a toothbrush, and a new round of bullets. He was reserved about it, so much so that he was hardly even thinking about it, but it was all Wanda allowed herself to focus on. It was dangerous to stay in that world, no matter how appealing it truly was. She might be able to see other universes, but she couldn’t stay there permanently. That Pietro in her visions wasn’t her Pietro, the one who’d lived through everything with the Avengers. He wasn’t hers anymore, just as Zemo’s family wasn’t his. Things died. Even if they didn’t deserve it. They were moving on. There was no value in bodies or false fantasies. She had to stay anchored to every moment in this world. 

“I can take a wild guess with the zip ties, chloroform, and bullets, but what’s the toothbrush for?” Wanda asked as they approached Karpov’s house.

“We need good information out of him, and I can’t get too creative with my methods.” He parked the car, slung his bag over his shoulder, and glanced back at her. “You ready?”

“Yeah.” It was routine at that point. Plus, she was excited to hear about what Karpov had to say. It was time to build momentum in this little investigation. Plus, a morbidly curious part of her still didn’t understand what the toothbrush was for.

Zemo knocked on the door, and a man that didn’t match Karpov’s face in the Hydra files answered. Zemo had even briefed her for this happening.

“Apologies, sir,” Zemo said. He glanced at her. “We were told this a man named Vasily Karpov lived here. We must have the wrong address.”

“I don’t know anyone with that name.”

Wanda dug into his mind, where an image of Karpov popped into his head, crystal clear. 

She gave Zemo the signal and used a hex to hold him still. Zemo leapt forward and smothered him with the chloroform-covered cloth. It worked a bit slower than Wanda had seen in the movies, smelled like it killed brain cells, but the man was down.

Zemo shut the door and started dragging the man through his house.

“You don’t think the neighbors will notice?” Wanda asked.

“He has a basement.”

Not that it necessarily would’ve been useful in taking over the world, but Strucker really could have taught them a thing or two about going about a successful mission like this. She followed Zemo down to the basement, a hex holding a bit of the weight as Zemo dragged him. The body made a lot of noise on the narrow staircase going down, and the place itself surprised her a bit. Still dank, and smelled like mildew of some kind, but still had a pretty decent set up with a couch, television, and old pool table and bar tucked into a corner. 

Zemo lugged him over toward the pool table, and Wanda let him go. He moved the man’s arms so they were straight out in front of him. One zip tie, and it was like he was holding a post on the pool table. With the same thing done to his legs, the man would wake up quite sore. 

“Is chloroform damaging?” Wanda asked as they waited for the man to wake up.

Zemo loaded the bullets into his gun. “Not any more damaging than hitting a guy on the head with a blunt object. Actually, that causes more damage than people think.”

She glanced at the man. “Well, aren’t you a saint?”

He shrugged. A young woman in bellbottoms rushed past, humming to herself. Wanda pinched herself until the woman was gone. _Here and now._

The man stirred, knocking his head against the pool table. 

“W-Where am I?” the man asked.

Zemo squatted down to be at eye level. “Don’t worry, you’re still home. We just had some questions to ask you.”

“And you couldn’t just ask them while you were at my door?”

“Liars don’t tend to soften up with persistence alone.”

The man shook his hands against his restraints. Clearly not a field agent for Hydra.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

“We were told Vasily Karpov lived here. We simply want to know where he actually is.”

He continued to strain against the restraints. “I don’t know who you’re talking about!”

“Highly ranked Hydra officer. Judging by how well you’re holding up right now, I’d say you were his secretary.”

He yanked against his restraints, and the table shook. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Do you really want to go through this?” Zemo pulled out a pair of scissors. “Give me my information, I’ll cut you loose.”

Sweat began to line his forehead. “I really don’t know anything about Karpov or Hydra or anything.”

His mind didn’t betray him. The names themselves were familiar to him, lit up spots in his mind, but he wasn’t filing through everything he knew about Hydra and Karpov. In fact, the only images in his mind were of Zemo in front of him, and whether or not he was going to die. Family members’ faces came up more than anything relating to Karpov.

Zemo paused. “Nothing I can do to jog your memory?”

The man’s gaze went to Wanda. It used to startle her, the way they’d seek her out like being a young woman was supposed to mean she’d have some breakthrough and show more compassion. It was the last thing on her mind then. Even if he was just a Hydra secretary. 

Zemo finally brought out the toothbrush. 

He motioned her over and grabbed one of the man’s hands. He spread out his index and middle fingers and stuck the toothbrush between them.

“Hold his fingers tight together,” he told her.

Zemo really was a walking encyclopedia of pain. She did as he said, and he started twisting the toothbrush. It didn’t seem painful on principle, but the man’s face contorted to the action, bitting his lip nearly clean through to not make a sound. 

“Just say the word,” Zemo said. 

Wanda had to stop watching when she started seeing the toothbrush run over the exposed flesh. She could practically feel the toothbrush grind into the bone, and that was without the emotion banging through his mind. 

“He’s in Ohio!” the man finally cried out. “He said he was relocating abroad, but he didn't say anything else! I think he said Ohio! Please.” He choked a sob. “Please just stop.”

Zemo lifted the bloody toothbrush out from between the man’s fingers. 

He glanced back at her, twirled the toothbrush in his fingers.

Drew his gun, and shot the man. 

Wanda flinched, but knew it was from the surprise, not what he’d actually done. 

Silence permeated between them.

“Where’s Ohio?” Wanda asked.

Zemo wiped the blood on his toothbrush onto the man's pants. “America.”

She’d never been to America before.


End file.
